QUESTION: And welcome to Hannity. We start tonight with a Fox News alert. At this hour, President Trump delivering a spirited commencement address at the University of Alabama. We will check in with that live in just a few moments. But first, a major announcement from the White House. Mike Waltz has been nominated now to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will now fill in as Donald Trump's National Security Advisor while continuing to lead the State Department.
Now, in case you're keeping track, this means that Secretary of State Rubio is now the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the Acting USAID Administrator, and the Acting Archivist. I mean, you've got a lot. Now on X, Vice President J.D. Vance actually was very funny, remarking, quote, "I think he could take on a bit more. If only there was a job opening for a devout Catholic…" When does conclave start? I think the 7th.
Here now with more is Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Mr. Secretary, you've got to admit that was pretty funny. I like that.
SECRETARY RUBIO: No, we thought about it, but you have to - it's an unmarried Catholic male. You don't have to be a priest. Any - people don't know that. Any unmarried Catholic male can be pope, but I got married and I'm happily married, so I guess I'll miss out on that one.
QUESTION: I know. And by the way, you have a great - you've got a great family and your son's a great football player and I know you're very proud, and you should be.
Look, we've been friends a long time. Really - and I'm happy for Mike Waltz, by the way. I think he'll be a great UN ambassador, and we need one. And you - your wheelhouse has always been foreign policy. I've known you forever. This is your passion. Your heart is here. These are consequential times. We've got Europe, we've got Russia-Ukraine, we've got the Middle East, we have Iran, and then we have this - our number one geopolitical foe, China.
Let's start in Europe. Let's start with Putin. You said this week may be the deciding week for him. Clearly, the minerals deal yesterday was a big win for the President and the White House. Where do we stand with Putin?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, let's remind everybody this is not our war. I mean, this is a war that started under Joe Biden. For three years it went on. They made no effort to sort of bring it to a conclusion. And it's a war that has no military solution: in essence, Putin can't take all of Ukraine; Ukraine can't push the Russians all the way back to where they were in 2014.
And so the question here is, who is the only leader in the world that can talk to both sides and hopefully bring them to a deal, and that's President Trump. And that's what he's tried to do. For a hundred days he has done efforts to bring about peace, to end the killing, to end the dying, to end the destruction. You know that Ukraine - it's going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild that country.
And so the President has tried. Look, we've gotten closer. We - for the first time - we haven't known this for three years - we kind of can see what it would take for Ukraine to stop. We can see what it would take for the Russians to stop. The problem is those two positions are still a little far apart.
And look, we're not going to give up on it in the sense that we're not going to be ready to help if we can, but there does come a point where the President has to decide how much more time at the highest levels of our government do you dedicate it, when maybe one of the two sides or both aren't really close enough when we've got so many - I would argue even more important - issues going on around the world. Not that a war in Ukraine is not important, but I would say what's happening with China is more important in the long term for the future of the world. Obviously, Iran's nuclear ambition, all these other things that we have going on.
So at some point in time, it either has to be something that can happen or we all need to move on. That'll be a decision the President will have to make.
QUESTION: Well, I will say this: The consequences are really dire in every situation that you're referring to. Let me go back to Putin for one more second. I mean, the mineral deal - I don't think we can under - I don't think we can overstate how important that's going to be for Ukraine's security, the relationship they will have now moving forward with the United States. That's a big part of the puzzle.
It's important, I think, for people to understand in the four years when Donald Trump was president from 2017 till he left office in 2021, no problems with Vladimir Putin. But in 2014, 11 years ago, that's when Crimea was annexed. When Joe Biden was president and Putin was amassing troops on the border and military equipment on the border, he's asked, well what happens if he invades? Of course he was going to invade. He said well, it depends if it's a minor incursion.
And it makes you wonder - nobody ever dared to pick up a phone and even attempt or try to stop it from happening. That to me is unconscionable.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah.
QUESTION: In your heart, do you feel like - are you close? I mean, you're in the middle of this.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah. Well, I'm glad you gave everybody that lesson because that's - not only did it happen in 2014 under President Obama, but during that time the Obama administration refused to provide the Ukrainians any military weapons. They would provide them blankets and sheets and towels and - but they wouldn't give them weapons.
Donald Trump, when he was president the first time, provided them the weapons that actually helped stop the Russian tanks from taking Kyiv even when he was no longer in the White House a few years later. This invasion would have never happened if Donald Trump were in the White House, but it did. It happened under Joe Biden. It happened just a few months after the fiasco in Afghanistan. And I think everyone realizes Putin saw that and said now is my time to go, I have a weak president under Joe Biden, and he went. And this war dragged on for three years.
Look, you asked how close we are. I think we know where Ukraine is and we know where Russia is right now and where Putin is. They're still far apart. They're closer, but they're still far apart. And it's going to take a real breakthrough here very soon to make this possible, or I think the President is going to have to make a decision about how much more time we're going to dedicate to this.
And you're right about the minerals deal. It's good for America because we've invested a lot of money in this war. It's also good for Ukraine because it's going to help them be able to develop their economy and rebuild when this war ends.
QUESTION: Well, they're going to need a lot of money to rebuild.
SECRETARY RUBIO: They are.
QUESTION: Okay, let's move to the Middle East and let's move to what happens in Gaza. It can no longer remain a launching pad for their missiles, Hamas missiles, to be fired into Israel. That we agree on. I know the President has said and you have said and Steve Witkoff has said - everybody has said - the Iranians cannot have a nuclear weapon. The only reason they're close is because Joe Biden put a blind eye towards the sanctions that were bankrupting Iran, as far as I'm concerned.
However, they are closer than they have ever been. To me, a deal with Iran would have to include the following: Their enrichment would have to be stopped, their facilities shut down by Americans; we would need anywhere anyplace anytime American inspectors, not international inspectors. Why in my heart of hearts do I not believe that the mullahs of Iran would ever agree to that, and do you agree that those should be the conditions?
SECRETARY RUBIO: If Iran wants a peaceful civil nuclear program, meaning they want nuclear power plants like other countries in the world have, there's a way to do it. And that is you build the reactors and you import enriched uranium to fuel those reactors. That's how dozens of countries around the world do it.
The only countries in the world that enrich uranium are the ones that have nuclear weapons. Iran is at - they're claiming they don't want a weapon, but they would be - what they're basically asking is to be the only non-weapon country in the world that's enriching uranium.
And the level at which they enrich it is really not relevant per se because, really, if you have the ability to enrich at 3.67 percent, it only takes a few weeks to get to 20 percent and then 60 percent and then the 80 and 90 percent that you need for a weapon.
And so that really is the path forward here. Iran simply needs to say we've agreed to no longer enrich, we're going to have reactors because we want nuclear energy, and we're going to import enriched uranium. This is an opportunity for them if they take it. This is - and this is the best opportunity they're going to have. President Trump is a president of peace. He doesn't want a war. He doesn't want conflict. None of us do. And there's a path forward here. But what cannot happen is to live in a world where Iran has a nuclear weapon.
QUESTION: There's a path forward. The path forward has been given to them.
SECRETARY RUBIO: It has.
QUESTION: And now it's a matter of whether or not they're going to take it. And the President was very, very clear he would lead the effort to stop them from ever achieving that nuclear weapon. And that would mean - that statement was obvious in terms of that he would use military force to destroy those facilities. We have the capacity, obviously, to do it.
But back to this question: Would we need American inspectors and American scientists to shut it down, and would that have to be part of the deal, and anywhere anyplace anytime American inspectors? Would they have to agree to that in your mind?
SECRETARY RUBIO: I think you would have to allow Americans as part of - you can send - maybe there'll be French inspectors, there'll be Italian inspectors, there'll be Saudis, whoever. But I think you cannot basically say we will not allow any Americans.
You also have to make sure - if you really want to prevent a nuclear program, okay, and you're not building a nuclear weapon, then you should open all your facilities. One of the failures of the Biden - I'm sorry - of the Obama nuclear deal with Iran is that you could not inspect military sites. Well, if you're making nuclear weapons, you would probably make them on a military site. And by the way, it's been known and discovered that in the past Iran has had a secret nuclear program that it did not disclose to the world.
So I think if in fact - Iran likes to say they're not interested in nuclear weapons. They like to say all they want is peaceful nuclear energy. Then they should not be afraid of inspections by inspectors of any kind, including Americans.
And look, there's a win here for Iran, okay? They can actually have real economic development, can have real investment in their country, but they have to walk away from sponsoring terrorists, they have to walk away from helping the Houthis, they have to walk away from building long-range missiles that have no purpose to exist other than having nuclear weapons, and they have to walk away from enrichment.
These are not unreasonable requests. There are countries all over the world that have nuclear energy and don't enrich and don't have long-range missiles and don't sponsor terrorism. That path is there for them. It's the path of peace. And frankly, I pray and hope, and we'll do everything we can to help convince them that they should take it.
QUESTION: I have the same prayer that you do. And they know what the consequences will be, and they will probably lose their nuclear sites, they'll lose their refineries. And if that's the case, that would probably result in poverty and regime change.
Last question, China. You're right. I view them, as you do, as our top geopolitical foe. Things seem to be heated in public. Are there any things going on behind the scenes that give you some hope that hopefully, for example, on trade and tariffs we can come to some type of agreement? Because they put tariffs on basically every American product and it's just - they've been ripping us off forever.
SECRETARY RUBIO: They have. They've been ripping off the world. And look, yes, there's efforts. You can see that, look, this is hurting the Chinese economy. People forget that the factories where all these shoes and shirts and clothing and all that stuff that comes from China, those are all Chinese jobs. When they say that the containers, that the factories are not going to be sending things to America, that means they're out of a job. This is hurting the Chinese economy badly.
I think there's two questions. Can we reach some sort of short-term accommodation with them? That's what they want. I mean, the Chinese are reaching out. They want to meet. They want to talk. We've got people involved in that. Obviously, our Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is involved in those efforts and their talks will come up soon.
But I think there's a broader question, and that is whether we shouldn't - this is a wakeup call that we truly need to become a country that can make more things in America and not be as dependent on China. We were far too dependent on China. We allowed them through unfair trade practices to de-industrialize us and to use not just tariffs but non-tariff barriers, currency manipulation, dumping. We've allowed them to use all of those things to —
QUESTION: Intellectual property theft.
SECRETARY RUBIO: And stealing intellectual property, and really left us de-industrialized as a country and heavily dependent on them. That's a very dangerous place to be, and President Trump is taking it on, and he's doing it now because it needs to be done now. It cannot wait any longer. Two more years in this direction and we are going to be in a lot of trouble, really dependent on China. So I do think there's this broader question about how much we should buy from them at all moving forward.
QUESTION: Well, Godspeed, Mr. Secretary. These are consequential and transformational times, and you're right in the middle of all of it. And we wish you the best for the sake of the world, and I hope some of these people understand the seriousness of the President. Sometimes they might underestimate him.
Mr. Secretary, thank you.
