Marco Rubio hopes John Kerry will ‘stick to the climate stuff’

Marco Rubio. Image via AP.

On Tuesday morning’s Fox and Friends, Sen. Marco Rubio joined other Republicans and blasted U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry for allegedly disclosing Israeli military operations to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Kerry denies the allegations, but Republicans are not convinced, including the Senior Senator from the Sunshine State.

Rubio expressed concerns that Kerry’s portfolio be restricted to “the climate stuff,” where he isn’t “sticking his nose” into a renegotiated deal with Iran, while wanting to know more about the timing of the alleged disclosures.

“That would be a major foreign policy catastrophe for the country, if it were revealed that it were true that he was having (those conversations), and it’s not clear when exactly he told him about it,” Rubio said. “Was it after he was Secretary of State? Was it during the negotiations?”

“Now I’ll say this,” the Senator added. “What happens with a lot of these guys is they fall in love with these deals. The deal becomes more important than the impact that deal’s going to have.”

“Just having that deal, because they believe so much in it, that you’re willing to do things you wouldn’t do under normal circumstances. That happens all the time in life, it happens all the time in politics unfortunately, but when it happens in something like this involving national security it could be very dangerous,” the Senator added.

“The most important thing, as well, is that he’s now part of this administration,” Rubio continued. “He’s gotta stick to the climate stuff. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t have this guy sticking his nose into any of the work happening with Iran, even though I’m not sure the people working on Iran now would be much better. You’d hope at the minimum they weren’t betraying allies.”

Host Brian Kilmeade solicited the Senator’s commentary on whether Kerry could be “cowboying it” on last decade’s nuclear-deterrence deal between the Barack Obama administration and Iran, an accord widely excoriated by Republicans. But the Senator seemed non-plussed.

“I don’t think he could sign a deal, to be part of a deal that provided the cash,” Rubio said, before rhetorically pivoting.

“It’s possible. That if you want to do a deal with somebody on the other side, you give them something of value that isn’t on paper. That’s where something like giving them insight into what our allies in Israel are doing would add to that.”

Kilmeade pressed his case against the “treasonous” John Kerry, but Rubio did not take the bait, and the segment moved on.

Rubio did not take as hard-line a position as Florida’s other Senator.

Rick Scott demanded that President Joe Biden remove Kerry from National Security briefings and that these “deeply disturbing” allegations be “explained immediately.”

“If true, he must resign,” Scott tweeted Monday.