“Our country is interested in having a secure, stable Cuba aligned with the United States. I feel the same way about Venezuela,” the Secretary of State said in an interview on Katie Miller’s podcast.
14ymedio, Madrid, August 12, 2026 / “I am certain that Cuba, before this administration ends, will be on an irreversible path toward a very different future.” This was the emphatic statement made by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an interview with his wife, Jeanette, on Katie Miller’s podcast, published this Tuesday.
Asked whether the Island is next on the list after the capture and removal of Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, Rubio seemed confident, but warned: “You can’t have something in the same place for 70 years, with deep roots, and think that overnight you can uproot it all and plant something completely new. A transition and a process have to occur.” In that respect, he cited the fall of the Berlin Wall in Eastern Europe as an illustrative example.
“We saw that it took between three and five years for the countries of Eastern Europe to become what we know today,” he recalled. “Poland is probably the best example.” And he emphasized that “Cuba will be on that path, well advanced on that path,” given the priority given to the island by the current administration. “Nothing can ever be guaranteed,” he added, “but it is certainly a priority, because it is in our national interest.”
“I worry about Cuba, obviously I have a personal connection, but I don’t work for Cuba, I work for the United States.”
On this point, he emphasized: “I worry about Cuba, obviously I have a personal connection, but I don’t work for Cuba, I work for the United States, and I believe it is in our country’s national interest to have a secure and stable Cuba aligned with the U.S. I feel the same way about Venezuela.”
Regarding the incursion against Maduro, Katie Miller asked Jeanette Rubio if she noticed him nervous at home during those days, and if she could guess that something big was happening in the world because of his change in behavior. She said that she “knew something was going on because he was constantly going in and out; we didn’t do anything during the holidays, but I didn’t know exactly what.” Jeanette maintains that aside from being “busier, on the phone, and thinking,” her husband always remains “calm and relaxed.”
In a relaxed tone, the reporter alternated questions between the two, focusing more on informal topics than on matters related to Rubio’s position. When asked if his predecessors had given him any advice before taking office, the official said, “Yes, some,” but that “more than advice, they shared their impressions.” The Secretary of State affirmed that, in any case, “much of what we do depends on the times you live in.” He continued, “If you were Secretary of State in the middle of the Cold War, or after 9/11, it was a very different world from the one we’re facing right now.” Ultimately, he said, it’s a position that “works for the president,” and depends on who occupies the White House, in his case, Donald Trump.
The program included a segment in which, during the 2016 Republican primaries in which they faced off, Miller referred to him as “Little Marco” after asking if he had considered a rapper name for him, such as “Lil Marco,” given his fondness for that music. The Secretary of State dodged the joke: “No, I wouldn’t be a good rapper, but I could be a good producer.”
Rubio also recounted, amused, the moment Trump offered him the position: “He just called me and told me,” he said. “I think I had even posted it already, and then he told me. And I was happy to do it, I felt honored. He’s not so much about ‘are you interested in being?’ as ‘hey, you’re going to be,’ and I said, ‘okay, let’s do it.’”
They both agreed to answer the question about the secret to a happy marriage. “You answer that question,” Jeanette urged. “There’s no secret,” he countered. And she continued, “You have to have a friendship.” After explaining that he forgives offenses more easily than she does, Marco Rubio concluded, “People watch movies and think that marriage is something where you’re happy all the time. And it’s not. You enter into a partnership to share life, and life is hard.”
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