Rubio urges conservatives to uplift their ideology, brushes off GOP midterm losses

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday downplayed Republicans’ devastating losses in the midterm elections, instead telling supporters, “Politics requires more than simply winning elections.”

“Those who believe that one setback, one defeat, one bad election spells the end of the republic should look to you as an example for inspiration,” Rubio said in his first major remarks since Election Day, given to the conservative Federalist Society at the National Lawyer’s Convention in Washington, D.C.

Rubio, whose name has been floated as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, told the audience, “Great things that last are built in decades, not election cycles.”

“There will be more victories, and there will be more defeats,” he said. “There will be more triumphs, and there will be more disappointments.”

The secretary of state urged the crowd to remember that the government “is not the only source of political power” as he emphasized the importance of still uplifting conservative ideology despite election losses.

Rubio pointed to power held by universities, the press and “the whole expanse of civil society.”

“Elections decide who holds office for a season, but elections, they do not decide by themselves what our institutions teach or what our lawyers believe,” Rubio said.

He also condemned the “endless barrage of claims about America’s alleged violations of international rules and norms,” including allegations that the U.S. had violated international law when striking boats allegedly used to traffic drugs in the Caribbean Sea or over the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies.

Rubio also defended the U.S. capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the continued war in Iran.

“None of this has anything to do with any real higher standard of justice. It is a function of the people who control the official organs of global governance,” Rubio said. “For this global elite, international law is not a neutral body of rules. International law is an instrument, an instrument to advance their interests under the pretense of universal principles.”

Rubio denounced the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, saying, “Americans have never agreed to submit to the ICC’s authority, but that court and its allies in the global bureaucracy have appointed themselves judge and jury and executioner of the international order.”

Last month, the Trump administration imposed sweeping sanctions on the ICC as part of its campaign to dismantle the court after it announced investigations into the U.S.

Rubio on Friday also criticized “activist courts” on American soil, telling the crowd of lawyers, “The weaponization of international law is not altogether different from what we’ve seen here at home.”

“The activist courts who seek to govern by injunction, twisting the law to fit whatever their preferences happen to be at any given place or time,” he said, adding that the judges are “allies” of those who have “denounced the Constitution.”

“For these people, the fundamental purpose of the law, American law and international law alike, is to weaken the United States,” Rubio said. “It is to undermine our power as a sovereign nation to act. It is to hinder the American government’s ability to defend American interests at home and abroad.”

Rubio’s words echo repeated attacks by President Donald Trump on judges who rule against his interests. The president has also increasingly clashed with the Supreme Court, which holds a 6-3 conservative majority and includes three justices appointed to the bench by Trump.

The high court ruled against Trump this year on his tariff policies, his plan to diminish birthright citizenship, his efforts to interfere with mail-in ballots ahead of the midterm elections and his firing of a member of the Federal Reserve.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling on his tariff policies, Trump called the justices a “disgrace to our nation.”