Rubio’s Firing Of Marocco Ignites A Maga World Meltdown

Peter Marocco, the Trump administration official in charge of dismantling USAID, left a meeting at the White House last week to return to his office at the State Department. But when he arrived, Marocco could not enter the building: security told him he was no longer an employee there, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Word of Marocco’s firing quickly tore through the Republican Party and MAGA ecosystem, startling President Donald Trump’s loyalists who viewed the aide as part of an elite cohort of administration true believers. Loud voices on the right piled on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing him of undermining their disruptive agenda.

Yet Marocco’s abrupt termination, which has not been fully reported until now, was not an impulsive dismissal or a case of Rubio going rogue. This report was based on conversations with five people, including administration officials and allies, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters. Four of the people said Rubio fired Marocco. They gave varying explanations: one administration official said Rubio and others wanted Marocco out due to what they saw as his bulldozer operating style and failure to work effectively with colleagues; others pointed to substantive disagreements between Rubio and Marocco over how to dismantle USAID. Meanwhile, Marocco allies viewed Rubio and his team as insular, controlling and obstructionist to the DOGE agenda ordered by the president.

One White House official said Rubio went to a senior White House aide for clearance to remove Marocco after tensions reached a boiling point last week. They described Marocco’s firing as “the first MAGA world killing from inside the White House.”

Marocco did not respond to requests for comment. 

“President Trump and his team are extremely grateful for the work of Pete Marocco, who accomplished his mission to fix America’s long-broken foreign assistance enterprise,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly. “His work carried out many of the President’s priorities to eliminate waste and restore accountability to taxpayers, and he will continue to be a welcome figure in the President’s movement to Make America Great Again.”

“Pete was brought to State with a big mission — to conduct an exhaustive review of every dollar spent on foreign assistance. He conducted that historic task and exposed egregious abuses of taxpayer dollars. We all expect big things are in store for Pete on his next mission," a State Department official said when asked for comment.

The political aftershocks from the dismissal continue to rattle through the administration.

In the days since his ouster, Marocco’s MAGA allies have come to his defense and raised new suspicions of Rubio, including questions about why he would want to protect USAID and whether he’s loyal to the president.

The anger directed at Rubio by MAGA firebrands provides a vivid illustration of the ongoing feud between MAGA world and the conservatives they view as too much a part of the establishment they want dismantled. And the two men clashed over the Department of Government Efficiency’s gutting of USAID, one of the first and most visceral examples of the second Trump administration’s more aggressive, burn-it-down approach to the federal bureaucracy. As Rubio maintains what many believe is a shaky hold on his power in the Cabinet, Marocco’s ouster may further weaken his position with some of the loyalists in Trump’s ear.

“He’s really not a MAGA guy, he’s a neocon,“ a Trump ally said of Rubio, adding that this move “is gonna bite him.”

Another Trump administration official familiar with the situation said Rubio was unhappy with Marocco, but it wasn’t ideological. Marocco didn’t get along well with many of his immediate colleagues, including people who reported to him. Rubio and others also were frustrated with how Marocco handled his day-to-day duties, the official said.

“It wasn’t just Rubio who wanted him moved,” the official said. “It was a group decision, including people from the White House, who were getting complaints about him.”

A former U.S. official in touch with people who worked with Marocco at State echoed that explanation. Marocco had largely sidelined career employees who could help him do his job and was often “flying blind,” the former official said.

Marocco has a history of rankling his co-workers, including during the first Trump administration, when he held several positions. In 2020, he spent a few months at USAID, where his style and demands upset staffers so much that they crafted a 13-page memo laying out their concerns for the agency’s senior leaders.

Some staffers this time grew especially frustrated at how he worded memos and cables, which later affected court cases involving USAID, the former official said.

Rubio announced in March that 83 percent of USAID’s programs had been cut, calling it “overdue and historic reform.” But the former senator from Florida wanted to hold on to some remaining programs, whereas Marocco wanted to fully destroy the foreign aid agency, according to three of the people familiar with the situation.

“That’s where the fight happened. They did not see eye to eye on killing USAID off forever or keeping part of it around,” said the White House official.

The State Department official pushed back on the idea that Rubio was against a full shutdown of the agency: “Any assertion that we are looking to keep USAID operational is categorically false.”

In late March, Rubio said USAID would be shuttered and the remaining programs – “elements that directly align with America’s national interests” – would be folded into State, “creating a more streamlined process that will allow for oversight and accountability of every U.S. dollar spent,” the official continued.

But that has not stopped a MAGA meltdown over what prominent leaders in the movement view as a betrayal of one of their own. Far right influencer Laura Loomer, for example,published social media poststhat riled up her followers against Rubio. Loomer was in part behind the slew of firings at the National Security Council earlier this month, by making the case to Trump in the Oval Office that certain high level officials were not sufficiently loyal and aligned with MAGA. Marocco is viewed as a “die hard” loyalist and his moves to cut USAID were among the most popular DOGE actions with the Trump base, according to Trump allies.

Rubio, on the other hand, has a tenuous position as Trump’s secretary of State, in part because of his history as a more traditional Republican who challenged Trump for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

Since signing onto Trump‘s team, Rubio has tried to appeal to the MAGA right. He has appeared on various shows that cater to that wing of the party, and his rhetoric and actions, especially in support of the president’s crackdown on migrants, has startled many observers who thought of Rubio as more of a moderate.

In some cases, the MAGA factions have cheered on Rubio’s moves, such as his decision this week to eliminate what was left of a State Department-based initiative that focused on fighting disinformation. Many on the far right viewed that effort as being about silencing conservatives, though its supporters said it was about countering information warfare waged by adversarial countries such as Russia.

While Rubio has kept some USAID programs, including ones related to emergency food aid and health, he’s also sent signals that Marocco’s departure didn’t mean the end of cuts to U.S. foreign assistance.

Earlier this week, Rubio announced that under his direction, the State Department had “canceled another 139 grants worth $214 million,” ones he cast as funding left-leaning movements.