The briefing room door slid open 6 inches and Marco Rubio pushed his face through the gap. It was less like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and more like a goofy substitute teacher pulling a face to win over what he knew would be a difficult room.
It worked. Up to a point.
The audience chortled while the dual-hatted secretary of state and national security adviser took on yet another role: maternity cover for press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“Thank you for having me today,” he said, before launching into his spiel about why “Project Freedom” was very much a defensive operation to keep Iranian gunboats from interfering with shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a completely different proposition to Operation Epic Fury, which was over anyway.
Things started smoothly enough. The first question went to a reporter in the new media seat. She asked about whether he had evidence Iran was ready to drop its nuclear weapons program.
Things began to unravel when he called on someone in the back row. They had questions about Iran and about Cuba.
“Do they get to ask two questions on this?” Rubio muttered in the direction of White House communications director Steven Cheung, who was making a rare visit to the briefing room as if he knew it was going to be quite the show.
“You can ask two questions and I’ll give you one answer … I’ll take the one I like best,” he said with a smile after apparently making up his own policy on the matter.
Someone crammed into the aisle took a selfie in the meantime, capturing their own image with the secretary of state in the background. It was that kind of a day.
A reporter in the back row welcomed Rubio to the White House. He probably would have handed him an apple too if he hadn’t been at the back of the room.
At every pause, a sea of hands erupted into the air. Questions were shouted on Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba … especially Cuba, one of Rubio’s pet subjects.
A reporter from the Daily Mail asked him about a photograph posted on social media from a meeting he had with the U.S. Southern Command. It showed Rubio in front of a map of Cuba, raising intense speculation that the communist island was about to be Venezuelaed or worse.
It brought a master class in press handling from Rubio. His answer dripped in humor of the sarcastic variety, and left the story as deep underwater as those seven Iranian gunboats he likes to talk about.
“Cuba’s in SOUTHCOM, you know?” he said. “There happened to be a map of Cuba because it’s like the closest thing that’s in SOUTHCOM to the U.S.”
RUBIO SLAMS UN INACTION OVER MINES IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ
He wasn’t done. After a pause he delivered the coup de grace: “We have maps of other countries!”
The substitute teacher was showing who was in charge. The elite members of the White House press corps were being treated like dim students.
It brought another chuckle from reporters who are more used to drier answers and less-camouflaged contempt.
But he still didn’t know who anyone was.
“I’m winging it guys,” he said at one point as he searched for familiar faces.
He said he’d been given a seating map but he’d lost it en route to the lectern.
“Some of you had little red crosses,” he said to more gales of laughter. It was funny because it was probably true.
“I’m kidding,” he added, with the sort of denial that made it seem even truer.
Everyone had their hand in the air by this point. Everybody was shouting at the nation’s top diplomat as if he were an Amazon delivery driver taking a plasma TV to the wrong house.
And everyone was pretending that the Rubio finger had pointed at them, not the person of the opposite sex dressed in pink five seats away.
“The first one I called on,” said Rubio. “This is chaos.”
Next time, he said, he would bring a laser pointer.
Yet he made his point above the hubbub.
At times he did it with humor, at times by hammering the same point. With a wrinkled brow and the tone of a teacher explaining the error of their ways to a child who has been held back more than one school year, he gently spelled out the consequences for Iran of keeping along the same course.
“They are facing real, catastrophic destruction to their economy, generational destruction to their economy, generational destruction to the wealth of their country imposed on themselves by the actions that they’re taking,” he said.
“They should check themselves before they wreck themselves,” Rubio added.
He was gone soon after, his final words drowned out in more shouted questions about Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. Especially Cuba.
His job was done. The room had been schooled.
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