Marco Rubio really wants Donald Trump to know he’s still the “President of Peace.”
Rubio delivered the shameless bit of flattery Saturday, just as Trump’s war with Iran enters its sixth month. The secretary of state posted his declaration on X to mark the one-year anniversary of a peace declaration signed by the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at what he called a “monumental” White House meeting hosted by Trump.
“President Trump is the President of Peace,” Rubio’s post began. “One year ago today, he secured peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan during a monumental meeting at the White House. Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan and Azerbaijan President Aliyev signed a historic Joint Declaration that marked a historic breakthrough for both nations.”
In the weeks that followed, Trump bungled the details of the “war” he repeatedly claimed to have solved, referring to Armenia as “Albania” on at least two occasions and mangling the pronunciation of Azerbaijan.
On Sept. 18, during a joint press conference with the U.K.’s then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump announced that “I think that we settled Aber-baijan and Albania.”
Since then, Trump has captured and jailed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores; repeatedly threatened to take over Cuba and Greenland; and launched an ongoing—and increasingly deadly—war against Iran.
The very public suck-up didn’t go well for Rubio—or the president—as the post was quickly pelted with thousands of astonished, negative comments.
One X user sarcastically replied that he “admired” Rubio’s “commitment to branding, but ‘President of Peace’ hits differently when four months ago an entire civilization was apparently on a timer.”
Another poster put Cabinet officials in clown shoes.
“Was that before or after you guys dropped two tomahawk bombs on an elementary school,” one X user asked about the killing of some 175 people, many of them children, in a U.S. missile strike that demolished an elementary school during the first month of the war with Iran. “President of peace, my a–,” he concluded.
“Imagine needing a paycheck this badly,” wrote another poster alongside a photo of Rubio captioned, “My soul. Just sell it.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the State Department for comment on this story.
