'She Doesn't Want An Answer': Furious Rubio Spars With Sen. Duckworth On 'Illegal' Iran War, Hormuz

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Your budget request here would sadly perpetuate that trend and undermine the roles and responsibilities that you should be fulfilling as Secretary of State.

[00:00:06]>> Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

[00:00:07]>> Okay. I didn't get to answer any of that. I didn't question.

[00:00:11]>> Well, she didn't answer questions. She doesn't want me to answer. Can I answer anyway? Okay. Well, but she made a bunch of points. I get to answer them, right?

[00:00:17]We did a peace deal with Azarbaijan and Armenia. We just signed the trip agreement to yesterday actually or last week we signed it. Last night I officialized it. That that was diplomacy.

[00:00:27]>> That's great. But the Trump administration is still blowing through.

[00:00:30]Do I get to talk his entire budgeting?

[00:00:34]>> Senator Duckworth, I'm going to let Senator Rubio reply to the statements that you made at his request.

[00:00:40]>> Secretary Rubio, I trust you're familiar with then Sentcom Commander and Future Secretary of Defense Jim Matis's famous quote about the importance of um funding our foreign policy apparatus. In 2013, in response to a question from the now chairman of SAS, General Mattis pointed out that if you don't find, and I quote him, "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately." End quote.

[00:01:07]Unfortunately, despite his service in the first Trump administration, the second time around, you seem to have taken the message as a blueprint rather than as a warning. The budget that you're presenting today cuts the State Department by about a third after you previously tried to enact steep cuts and eliminations last year, many of which were already rebuked by Congress on a bipartisan basis. Time and again, this administration uses our military as a first tool of choice, manufacturing new crises and new conflicts that worsen the situation for folks abroad as well as for American people back here at home.

[00:01:40]And now you're here to justify a budget request that further undermines our diplomatic apparatus. the tools and professionals that are critical for not only preventing crises before they begin, but those who will be responsible for negotiating our way out of Trump's war of choice in Iran and whatever night other nightmares he dreams up with. So based on how this administration has conducted itself over the last year, our adversaries are learning that the United States is not a reliable negotiator.

[00:02:04]They're learning that we will quickly turn to using force before working to alleviate crisis points and prevent war.

[00:02:10]I'm very concerned that in turn that that in turn increases the risk of our adversaries jumping to use force first, increasing risk to American citizens and American interests around the world. We saw that instinct for the military option in the Caribbean and in Venezuela. And now we're seeing threats of it in Cuba while we're still engaged in the Middle East where President Trump is blowing a shocking amount of money and failing to uphold his solemn duty to put our service members at risk only for the most serious and imminent national security threats to American people. Uh Mr. Secretary, you also wear the hat of a national as our national security adviser. So with both that hat and as Secretary of State, do you agree that this administration has spent more on Trump's warrant in Iran than you are requesting today for this entire state department budget request?

[00:02:53]>> Yeah, I I can't speak to the Department of War would have to speak to you about the money and what they calculate are the costs. I just I can't give you an accurate answer on that because that's not the thing that I look at. I I would think you would have some over some some uh uh uh over some insight because you are on national security.

[00:03:10]>> Well, I've seen the testimony that Secretary Hexath and others have conducted in front of the the their their oversight committees, but I just can't I don't want to give you an answer that's not accurate.

[00:03:18]>> Okay.

[00:03:19]>> Well, this week, let me let me let me put out some numbers that that I have.

[00:03:22]This week, the cost of President Trump's illegal war of choice against Iran are likely to balloon past $35 billion by the rate from DoD's own May calculations and surpass your FY2027 budget request of 35.1 billion for the State Department and related programs. That's an astonishing figure worth repeating. In just 14 weeks, 14 weeks, President Trump will have blown through as much, if not more money in Iran than he thinks Congress should spend on US diplomacy for the entirety of the next fiscal year.

[00:03:53]This administration's distorted priorities have unfortunately revealed some stark lessons for our allies and partners as well. The United States use of force first will make them less secure as they'll be caught in the crossfire left scrambling to protect themselves and their people. Mr. Secretary, do you agree that under Operation Epic Fury, our allies and partners in the region have expressed concern about their security and the threats that followed from this administration's uncoordinated actions?

[00:04:15]>> No, I think our allies in the region have been very cooperative. Some obviously very aggressively cooperative like the UAE as an example. Kuwait's been fantastic. Obviously, no country likes to have their oil and their energy infrastructure hit. But I think it's a reminder to them of the threat that Iran poses. And the one lesson when this is all said and done is uh it's reminded them of you know despite all the friendly talk that you've seen in the past how dangerous Iran is to their own interests. How the billions of dollars Iran has spent despite sanctions Iran found the money to build drones and rockets and luckily we've taken a lot of them out but they still have some and they still have the ability. My question is about our allies in region expressing concerns because you see public reporting in early May revealed that Saudi Arabia denied US basing an overflight related to Trump's illconceived plan to escort ships through the straits of Hermuse and they're still not supportive of this risky tanker escort plan. And the strait is still worse off today than it was before Trump initiated this war. And that doesn't even touch on the wider global lessons being learned by our allies and partners.

[00:05:13]home from the Shanganger dialogue where I heard from folks across the Indopacific and especially in Southeast Asia who are being hit hard by the same rising energy costs that are devastating American communities. And frankly, this administration insists on using military force as a first resort instead of a last resort, no matter the deadly cost of self-defeating impacts. Uh your budget request here would sadly perpetuate that trend and undermine the roles and responsibilities that you should be fulfilling as Secretary of State.

[00:05:36]>> Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

[00:05:38]>> Okay. Okay. I didn't get to answer any of that question. Well, she didn't answer the question. She doesn't want me to answer. Can I answer anybody? Okay.

[00:05:45]Well, but she made a bunch of points. I get to answer them, right? First of all, I don't understand this thing, but let me tell you, we were just here. Maybe you weren't here. We were just talking about it. We did a peace deal with Azarbaijan and Armenia. We just signed the trip agreement to yesterday actually or last week we signed it. Last night I officialized it. That that was diplomacy.

[00:06:02]>> That's great. But the administration is still blown through when I get to do I get to talk his entire budget.

[00:06:09]Senator Duckworth, uh, I'm going to let Senator Rubio reply to the statements that you made at his request. Yeah, >> but we want we've got a hard stop at 12:30.

[00:06:19]>> Okay. But I know but you said a lot of stuff. I get to answer some of it. All right. So, the first is the the second is India, Pakistan. We ended that war.

[00:06:25]We were involved in helping broker that.

[00:06:27]Thailand, Cambodia, that's diplomacy.

[00:06:29]We've been very engaged and as in fact as I sit here now speaking to you, I've got the Lebanese government and the Israeli government meeting at the State Department starting at 8:30 this morning for the fourth time after engaging last week at the military level. So we're carrying out now you we're carrying out diplomacy all over the world constantly and very successfully in many cases. Now let me make one more point that you raise about the budget request. Guys, we understand how this process works. Okay, you guys I know cuz I've been here all the time. We we OM produces sort of timelines for every agency. We put forward a budget. We say this is the money we've been allocated. This is how we would spend it. There is a congressional process which I'm sure you're aware of. And in my time here, 16 years that I was here, I don't ever recall us once ever taking the president's budget and passing it into law. I'm not walking away from the budget. We can make it work if that's the budget you give us. But I have a sense, I have a suspicion, right, Senator Shats, that we're not we're gonna have to work with you shots that we're gonna have to well, you know, that we're gonna have to uh um that we're gonna have to work with you guys on a budget request that meets your priorities and ours. That's how it works. You guys are the appropriators.

[00:07:32]We have to work within the C. We will tell you what we care about. We will tell you how we're going to spend the money, but ultimately, you will provide us a spending bill and we will work through those parameters. But we have given you what we can live with. We can make it work. But if you wanted, you know, if you're obviously going to have changes here in in Congress, but this stuff about diplomacy and the money spent on the war, diplomacy is always costs less money. We don't buy missiles.

[00:07:53]We don't buy rockets. We don't buy large airplanes and aircraft carriers. But we've been very effective. And I can give you list after list of places that where we have had an impact in either deescalating crisis before it started or ending active wars. And I'm very proud of the work that we've done in that regard. Some of which haven't even been publicly discussed in some cases because they weren't high-profile. And my last point, we remain heavily engaged in areas that may not at the core are of our national interests, but nonetheless are related to our national interest.

[00:08:19]You look, you think about Sudan for a moment and the Quad. This has been a very frustrating situation to put together. But we helped convene a donor conference that got pledges for when that is is resolved. We've put a lot of time and energy in a situation that now unfortunately has turned into a proxy in the Middle East because of the UAE and the Saudis on opposite sides of it. in Libya where our work in Libya now has it's still divided but they for the first time ever have a joint budget for the first time ever are are cooperating on energy deals that are going to be beneficial to the people of Libya. So I just don't think it's fair to say we're not actively involved in diplomacy on last year's budget and spending because we are and we have been and to great success.

[00:08:56]>> Thank you.