There comes a point in the career of every contemporary Republican politician when they will be forced to do, say, or defend something that is broadly unconscionable. This mandatory inevitable heel turn is the price of conservative political ambition in the Donald Trump era. In exchange for the right to seek and attain national office in the party that he leads, Trump—in a curdled neofascist parody of the wedding scene from The Godfather—always eventually requires his supplicants to prove their loyalty to him by taking on his vendettas, bigotries, hatreds, and obsessions as their own. What’s more, he prefers that they do it with gusto.
Nah, Rubio has just always had the ambition for more, and being secretary of state would give him a leg up in future presidential contests in normal times. The problem is that being in Trump’s cabinet is actually never a good thing, as you’ll either be forced to do things that are the opposite of what you’ve stood for your whole career, you do something illegal, or you quit/get fired in disgrace.
And then, when we get into a post-Trump era someday, you won’t even be able to denounce Trump in the same way every Republican is now pretending they never liked George W Bush.