How Rubio went from Trump's political opponent to the White House inner circle

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

88% : But the one person who matters -- President Trump -- is happy.
78% : Carlos Trujillo, who knows both men well and served as Trump's ambassador to OAS in his first term, described Trump and Rubio as workaholics who are close to their families and love their kids.
78% : She said Rubio delivered Trump a "win" from the start when he made his first foreign trip to Panama.
74% : "He's been so successful with President Trump, because he realizes that he is the president of the United States, and it's Rubio's job to bring the best information forward in order for him to make the best decisions.
70% : Rubio learned how to carve out a meaningful role with Trump.
65% : But he recalibrated, created trust with Trump during his political exile and ended up in the small circle of top players in the president's second term.
63% : He continued his good relationship with Ivanka Trump, a Miami resident who was once touted as a possible political rival.
59% : "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and you move on and try to have a productive relationship," the Rubio adviser said. More importantly, he's demonstrated to Trump two things that are important to the president: He'll carry out Trump's political agenda and he'll deliver wins.
57% : And it's paid off, garnering Rubio four different positions: secretary of state, national security adviser, acting head of the U.S. Agency for International Development and acting archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration -- although he recently gave up the USAID gig.
50% : Now he has a prime seat at the table, whether that is in bilateral meetings at the United Nations, sitdowns with other leaders in the Oval Office, state dinners at Windsor Castle -- where he sat to the left of King Charles III -- or small group policy discussions in Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' office.
49% : His name is Donald Trump, and in the area of foreign policy, just under Donald Trump is Marco Rubio," Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East, told the Miami Herald.
46% : "I do not think enough people gave him the credit that he deserved when he left for Panama and when he came back, essentially all of the things that President Trump had hoped to see done were moving forward," said Filipetti, now executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition.
42% : One example: As a senator, Rubio was a vocal supporter of USAID but as secretary of state he oversaw its dismantlement when the agency became a target of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
35% : It's a sharp contrast from Trump's first term, when Rex Tillerson only made it a year as secretary of state and Trump went through six national security advisers.
34% : In that tight space, where Trump aides tend to keep a war-like mentality of it's "us vs. them," Rubio has made himself indispensable.
18% : Where some members of the GOP looked to split from Trump as prosecutions and allegations mounted, Rubio treaded carefully when it came to matters like the investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents and the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.
14% : It's in Wiles' spacious corner office, four doors down from the Oval, where she, Vance and Rubio gather to hash out policy issues before taking their recommendations to President Trump.
11% : Nine years ago, Rubio and Trump were at each other's throats in the 2016 presidential primary, which left their relationship in tatters and Rubio's future in the party unsettled.

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