STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Earlier this year, the Senate confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to his job by a vote of 99 to nothing, bipartisan. Yesterday, Rubio met with senators, and very little was bipartisan. One Democrat said he regrets voting to confirm Rubio, and Rubio replied, quote, "your regret for voting for me means I'm doing a good job." Here's NPR's Michele Kelemen.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he used to serve, Secretary Rubio found himself talking over Democrat Chris Van Hollen, who criticized him for revoking visas of students protesting Israel's war in Gaza.
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MARCO RUBIO: And they have to walk through a bunch of lunatics...
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Writing an op-ed to the Tufts...
RUBIO: ...Who are here on student visas. Simple as that.
VAN HOLLEN: ...Newspaper's disrupting the foreign policy of the United States?
RUBIO: I want to do more. I hope we can find more of these people.
VAN HOLLEN: That's pathetic, Mr. Secretary.
RUBIO: In fact, the other day...
KELEMEN: Van Hollen says Rubio has turned his back on his previous commitment to foreign assistance, human rights and democracy. He says the Trump administration left food rotting in warehouses as people died in Sudan.
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VAN HOLLEN: And I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for secretary of state.
KELEMEN: Nevada Democrat Jacky Rosen tried a different approach.
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JACKY ROSEN: I'm going to embrace my Jewish mother instincts for a moment. I'm not even mad anymore about your complicity in this administration's destruction of U.S. global leadership. I'm simply disappointed. And I wonder if you're proud of yourself in this moment when you go home to your family.
KELEMEN: Rubio defended the decision to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and got plenty of support for that from Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, later, in the Senate Appropriations Committee. And the secretary pushed back at those who say the Trump administration is withdrawing from the world.
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RUBIO: Because I just hit 18 countries in 18 weeks. That doesn't sound like much of a withdrawal. And I see some of these foreign ministers, including individuals from Ukraine, more than I've seen my own children, and I talk to them at least three times a week. We are engaged in the world, but we're going to be engaged in a world that makes sense.
KELEMEN: In both committee hearings, Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, appealed to Rubio to work with his former Senate colleagues on these reforms and not just burn everything down.
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BRIAN SCHATZ: The changes that you're making are not occurring in a vacuum. They are having catastrophic outcomes in the real world. Kids are dying. Mothers are passing HIV on to newborns. We are abandoning our Indo-Pacific partners and paving the way for China to swoop in.
KELEMEN: Rubio says the U.S. will continue to be a generous donor but won't be, in his words, the foreign aid provider for everyone everywhere.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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