Rubio is in lock-step with the White House regarding matters such as the Panama Canal, repatriation of illegal immigrants, U.S. control of the Gaza Strip, the necessity of greater influence on Greenland’s affairs, and the expansion of Chinese power overseas.

However, while Trump is known for his bombastic, often threatening rhetoric in pursuit of U.S. interests, Rubio is taking a softer, more diplomatic approach to achieve the same ends.

This was most recently seen Monday when Rubio visited the Panama Canal to tour facilities and meet with Panamanian officials about U.S. concerns regarding Chinese influence in the passage’s operations.

Trump previously declared he has no reservations about taking back control of the Panama Canal by force if necessary — but such threats were not necessary during Rubio’s trip.

Following his meeting with Rubio, President Jose Raul Mulino said the secretary of state conveyed “no real threat of retaking the canal or the use of force” — yet the U.S. envoy still left Panama in good spirits after the government agreed to allow its current arrangement with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative to expire.

“Yesterday’s announcement by President [Mulino] that Panama will allow its participation in the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative to expire is a great step forward for US-Panama relations, a free Panama Canal, and another example of [Trump’s] leadership to protect our national security and deliver prosperity for the American people,” Rubio wrote Monday on social media.

The Trump administration is also eyeing the acquisition of Greenland from Denmark, pointing to its strategic value as an Arctic nation close to the U.S. coastline and the Chinese Communist Party’s purported interest in using it as its ticket into the Arctic Circle.

The president is seeking a mutually beneficial handover of the territory but has said he is “not going to commit” to ruling out military force as a method of taking it, telling reporters, “It might be that you’ll have to do something.”

Rubio is broadcasting a similar level of urgency about the United States’s need to get a foothold in Greenland but has chosen to emphasize the proposal to buy the island nation from Denmark peacefully.

”This is not about acquiring land for the purpose of acquiring land. This is in our national interest, and it needs to be solved,” Rubio said last week in an interview with Sirius XM’s Megyn Kelly. “President Trump’s put out there what he intends to do — which is to purchase it.”

In the interview, Rubio explained that Trump’s aggressive posture toward world leaders — often characterized as brutish and belligerent in his demands — is simply a form of honesty about U.S. priorities and worst-case scenarios.

“Ultimately, I think diplomacy, in many cases, works better when you’re straightforward, as opposed to using platitudes and language that translates to nothing,” Rubio said.

Jonathan Schanzer, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the differences in style probably stem from the vast chasm between the two politicians’ pre-2025 careers.

“[Marco Rubio] spent literally years studying some of the more challenging foreign policy problems of the United States with great nuance — Donald Trump doesn’t have that experience,” Schanzer told the Washington Examiner. “When [Trump] speaks, he often will rattle cages. He has been a disrupter from the moment he stepped onto the world stage […] so in that sense, they may actually end up being a good team — good cop, bad cop as it were.”

A similar dynamic is observable between the U.S. government and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is considered an illegitimate president by the Trump administration due to widespread political violence and election irregularities leading up to his third inauguration last month.

Trump has continued to play hardball with Maduro from the Oval Office, successfully ordering the release of kidnapped opposition and referring to his strongman government as a “regime.”

In response, Maduro has flirted openly with the idea of “liberating” Puerto Rico from the U.S. in the name of “anti-fascism.”

However, when U.S. special envoy Richard Grenell arrived in Caracas last week, seeking to negotiate with Maduro for large-scale repatriation efforts to bring back Venezuelan nationals living illegally in the U.S., the pair were cordial and straightforward.

The exact nature of their discussions is not publicly known, and the Venezuelan government has kept mute about the entire matter, but Grenell not only left with approval for the deportation flight, he also brought home six American detainees.

Just days later, the U.S. government announced the staggered end of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan nationals.

It’s an unexpected decision at a time when the administration is publicly rebuking the Maduro government, and it remains unclear whether this was part of a carrot-and-stick approach to the bilateral negotiations.

Rubio later told Fox News that there were “no talks” about recognizing the Maduro regime as legitimate and that the negotiations were “very simple.”

“I think leaders like Maduro — no matter how tough they try to be — they respect Donald Trump. They know this is not a guy who is going to send you a strongly worded letter. He will take action,” Rubio said.

He added, “I’m not going to talk about what those actions are, but he knows, and they know we have many options to inflict serious damage and harm on the Maduro regime.”

The Trump administration’s decide-first, ask-questions-later style of doing business was taken to a whole new level with its announcement that the U.S. will take “long-term” control of the Gaza Strip to facilitate reconstruction.

It’s an unexpected and highly contested proposal from the commander in chief, but Rubio has once again thrown his full weight behind the project — stating that the U.S. must “make Gaza beautiful again.”

“This is untraditional foreign policy. I don’t think there’s any other way to put it,” Schanzer told the Washington Examiner.