Rubio's Role Questioned Amid Iran and Ukraine Talks and a Report on Military Jet Travel

Presidential envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff led this week's round of U.S.-Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Abu Dhabi while Secretary of State Marco Rubio stayed in Washington, where he met Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha. The envoys are due to travel to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, then to Dublin to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. On Thursday, President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post that the U.S. does not need an Iran deal. That was widely read as a setback for Vice President J.D. Vance, who had led the negotiations, and as a win for the White House faction led by Rubio that opposes diplomacy with Tehran. Separately, The Atlantic reported that Rubio has used taxpayer money for personal travel, including military jets to football games, and said his justification does not hold up.

The right-leaning Washington Examiner leads with Rubio's position, asking in its headline whether he has been sidelined. It relies on a Ukrainian diplomat who said Kyiv's team works through the Witkoff-Kushner channel but that Rubio is kept informed, and it notes he called the Abu Dhabi talks very productive. The left-leaning Atlantic ignores the negotiations in the portion available and instead frames Rubio's use of government aircraft as a personal-use and taxpayer-cost problem. Both put Rubio under scrutiny, but one questions his influence and the other his conduct. The independent American Conservative offers a distinct angle: an Iran-focused argument that Rubio has prevailed over Vance, though it predicts the victory will prove Pyrrhic. It describes Trump's remark as an improvement over a "deal or war" stance, a view absent from the other two.