Donald Trump couldn’t resist turning a victory lap into a roast. While thanking Secretary of State Marco Rubio for helping broker the Gaza ceasefire, the president slipped into vintage campaign-mode banter, joking about Rubio’s past “nastiness” toward him, then crowning his onetime nemesis “the greatest Secretary of State in the history of the United States.” The split-screen moment unfolded Monday in Jerusalem, where Trump touted the truce and basked in a hero’s welcome.
“We had some unbelievably good people working on this, then you’re going to add a man named Marco Rubio,” Trump told a crowd, before rehearsing their old 2016 brawl. “He and I, you know, we really fought it out… he was tough, he was nasty. Who the hell thought this would ever happen, right Mark?” Then came the superlative, Trump’s prediction that Rubio would “go down… as the greatest Secretary of State” ever. Clips of the riff ricocheted online within minutes.
The praise-roast two-step landed amid a whirlwind of ceremony and geopolitics. Trump’s visit coincided with the implementation of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire package that saw the release of living Israeli hostages and a mass prisoner exchange, with world leaders shuttling between Jerusalem and a follow-on summit in Egypt to lock down the deal’s next phases. In the Knesset, Trump declared a “dawn of a new Middle East” and promised to press regional partners to keep the peace from unraveling.
NEW: President Trump declares Sec. Rubio will go down as the “greatest Secretary of State in the history of the United States.”
“Marco will go down—I mean this—as the greatest Secretary of State in the history of the United States. I believe that—I believe it.” pic.twitter.com/PhIA0G09Vb
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 13, 2025
Rubio, for his part, has been central to the shuttle diplomacy, a rapid ascent for a politician who once defined himself in opposition to Trump’s style and substance. The new alignment has produced plenty of surreal visuals, including viral moments of the secretary passing notes to the president during briefings and being fawned over by Israeli lawmakers who credit Washington’s pressure campaign for the breakthrough. The mutual admiration society, with a sprinkle of shade from Trump, is now officially part of the show.
In 2016, Rubio hammered Trump as a “con artist” and “most vulgar” figure in politics, while Trump tagged him “Little Marco” and “nasty,” a nickname he gleefully revived in Jerusalem with a grin. That both men now trade compliments in the same breath as they swap war stories says as much about Washington’s fluid loyalties as it does about Trump’s flair for theatrical reconciliation.
Whether the ceasefire endures is a separate question. The agreement’s enforcement, Gaza’s governance, and the choreography of prisoner returns remain live-wire issues that could test even the warmest Oval–Foggy Bottom relationship. But on Monday, the optics belonged to Trump and Rubio, a pair of one-time antagonists now playing partners on a peace stage, with the president toggling between roastmaster and hype man. If the deal holds, expect to hear “greatest Secretary of State” a lot more. If it wobbles, expect Trump to keep the spotlight anyway, cracking jokes about old grudges as he writes the next line.
