Secretary of State Marco Rubio has enough on his plate managing American foreign policy. Apparently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s sauerkraut won’t be joining it.
Rubio and his wife, Jeanette, offered a surprisingly candid glimpse into life inside the Trump administration during an appearance on “The Katie Miller Podcast,” covering everything from Cabinet members’ diets and pets to Pop-Tarts, UFOs and Rubio’s disastrous attempt at going keto.
Katie Miller is the wife of Deputy Chief of Staff and long-time Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller. Her podcast has become a behind-the-scenes look into Trump’s Cabinet members.
Asked whether he had embraced Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement, Rubio said he supported it.
His wife immediately disagreed.
“He’s completely not,” Jeanette Rubio said, revealing her husband’s fondness for Pop-Tarts.
“The Pop-Tart is one of the great American innovations in history,” Rubio responded.
Rubio also singled out Kennedy’s commitment to a meat-and-sauerkraut-heavy diet, saying the health secretary travels with his own food.
“I’m not gonna travel the world with a cooler full of sauerkraut,” Rubio said.
Rubio has tried changing his eating habits. It apparently didn’t go well. He described attempting the keto diet as a “near-psychotic event” brought on by sugar withdrawal, joking that giving someone in his position that much irritability could have geopolitical consequences.
“You could end up bombing Paraguay,” Rubio joked.
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Then there is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth‘s cat.
The Hegseths and Rubios are neighbors, Rubio revealed, and Hegseth’s cat routinely visits the secretary of state’s porch. Rubio, who prefers dogs, described the animal as “arrogant.”
The cross-Cabinet pet diplomacy apparently goes both ways: The Rubios’ goldendoodle has wandered into the Hegseth home.
Rubio’s unusually loose interview ranged well beyond his colleagues. He professed a fondness for Tupac Shakur and electronic dance music, discussed UFO sightings around U.S. military installations and admitted his ideal fall Saturday involves spending hours watching college football.
He also recalled spending roughly 90 minutes aboard Air Force One worried that another passenger sleeping on a couch might actually be dead. Rather than wake the person, Rubio said he kept watching for signs of breathing until the passenger finally stirred.
The interview offered an unusually personal look at an official better known for managing an increasingly complicated portfolio of international crises and national security issues.
It also established at least one clear boundary in American diplomacy: Rubio may travel the world on behalf of the president, but he won’t be doing it with a cooler full of fermented cabbage.
