President Donald Trump has formalized Marco Rubio’s dual role as secretary of state and national security adviser after Rubio spent more than a year holding the White House position on an acting basis.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
President Donald Trump has permanently appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as national security adviser, formalizing an arrangement that began in May 2025 and making Rubio the first person since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s to simultaneously hold both of the government’s senior foreign policy positions. Trump signed a commission establishing Rubio in the post permanently after he had served as acting national security adviser for roughly 16 months.
The formal appointment was reported by The Hill, which cited an unnamed White House source.
Rubio will continue serving as secretary of state while taking the national security adviser title on a permanent basis. His continued combination of the two positions places him in a role not held concurrently with the State Department post since Kissinger served as both secretary of state and national security adviser during President Richard Nixon’s administration.
Trump has repeatedly praised Rubio’s ability to handle multiple responsibilities within his administration.
“When I have a problem, I call up Marco. He gets it solved,” Trump said last year while praising Rubio shortly before assigning him the national security position on an interim basis.
Rubio assumed the additional job in May 2025 after Mike Waltz left the national security adviser position. At the time, Trump announced the transition on Truth Social, saying Waltz would be nominated to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations while Rubio temporarily took over his White House responsibilities.
“I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations,” Trump wrote.
“In the interim, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as National Security Advisor, while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department,” he added.
Rubio has remained in the position ever since, turning what was initially described as an interim assignment into a long-running arrangement before Trump made the appointment permanent Tuesday. Waltz subsequently became the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Contemporary reports from May 2025 confirmed that Trump had shifted Rubio into the national security role while allowing him to remain secretary of state.
The national security assignment was one of several positions Rubio accumulated during the early portion of Trump’s second administration. In addition to serving as secretary of state and acting national security adviser, Rubio at one point was also acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and acting archivist of the United States.
Waltz’s departure from the White House national security post followed controversy surrounding a Signal group chat he created in March 2025. The encrypted messaging conversation included senior administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Pete Hegseth, as they discussed planned military operations against Houthi forces in Yemen.
Waltz inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, to the group. Goldberg later published details about the messages, drawing scrutiny over the handling of sensitive military discussions. Trump subsequently announced that Waltz would leave the national security adviser position and be nominated for the U.N. post, while Rubio would temporarily assume his responsibilities.
Trump’s decision to make Rubio permanent in the job ends more than a year of uncertainty over whether another official eventually would be selected to lead the National Security Council. When Rubio first took over in 2025, Trump indicated that the arrangement was temporary, although he also suggested that combining the positions could work because of the overlap between the State Department and national security responsibilities.
The appointment also comes amid continued speculation over possible contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028. Rubio and Vice President JD Vance have both been mentioned in discussions about the party’s future leadership.
Rubio, however, said earlier this month that he currently has no plans to pursue a presidential campaign.
“I don’t know what the future holds, but I have no plans at this time,” Rubio said during a trip to Colombia. “I’m not a candidate for anything right now. And I’m 100% focused on my job, and I have to be because I have two jobs.”
His permanent appointment as national security adviser now formally establishes those two jobs — secretary of state and national security adviser — as concurrent responsibilities after more than a year in which Rubio had performed both roles under an acting designation.
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