Milei meets new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at black-tie gala

President Javier Milei met with incoming US secretary of state Marco Rubio, soon to be the United States’ top diplomat, at a black-tie gala in Washington on Monday night.

Argentina’s head of state dressed up to the nines for the Starlight Gala, staged to mark the inauguration of Donald Trump as the United States’ 47th president. 

Milei was  accompanied by his sister, Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei, and Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein at the event.

Though the Casa Rosada released no details of the meeting, a photograph showed Milei and Rubio giving each other with Milei’s traditional thumbs up gesture.

It is the latest in a series of similar pictures from Milei’s trip to Washington to attend Trump's inauguration.

Other highlights include photos with the head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Rubio, who visited Milei in Buenos Aires last year, will be sworn-in as Trump’s top diplomat on Tuesday. 

Trump and Milei’s administrations share views on a number of countries in the wider Latin American region, opposing regimes led by Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Miguel Díaz Canel in Cuba.

The US Senate unanimously approved Rubio as secretary of state on Monday.

Rubio, who is the first Hispanic and first fluent Spanish speaker to assume the position of top US diplomat, is Trump's first cabinet nominee to be confirmed by the Republican-led Senate.

Unusually in a highly partisan era, Rubio was confirmed 99-0, with several senators from the rival Democratic Party describing him as a friend. One Senate seat was made vacant by the inauguration of Vice-President J.D. Vance as Trump’s second-in-command.

"Given the uncertainty around the globe right now, it is in America's interest not to skip a beat and to fill this role immediately," said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"While we may not always agree, I believe he has the skills, knowledge and qualifications to be secretary of state," she said on the Senate floor.

Rubio will immediately have the task of executing the potentially erratic foreign policy of Trump, who in an inauguration speech Monday renewed threats to seize the Panama Canal but also pledged to be a "peacemaker."

Trump challenged the two secretaries of state in his first term with a foreign policy that swung rapidly, with Trump in one case shifting from threatening destruction of North Korea to declaring that he "fell in love" with strongman leader Kim Jong Un.

Rubio, the working-class son of Cuban immigrants who bitterly opposed Fidel Castro's communist revolution, is known for his hawkish stance toward Latin American authoritarian states and China.

In his confirmation hearing last week, Rubio accused China of cheating its way to superpower status and called the Asian giant "the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever faced."

Rubio is also expected to join Trump in being a stalwart defender of Israel, which a day earlier entered a long-awaited ceasefire with Hamas, something that had been sought exhaustively by Rubio's Democratic predecessor Antony Blinken.

Despite his collegial relations in the Senate, Rubio was once a bitter opponent of Trump, who famously belittled him as "Little Marco" when the senator unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

– TIMES/NA/AFP