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White House Trolls Marco Rubio With Gold-Framed Meme Shrine

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Marco Rubio
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Marco Rubio’s White House birthday present was not subtle. It was a gold-framed reminder that the internet has given President Donald Trump’s top diplomat almost every job imaginable.

The 55th birthday gift turned the viral “Rubio realizing” meme into a 68-panel collage, with the secretary of state remade as Robocop, an astronaut, the White House Easter Bunny, an Iranian ayatollah and even a cardinal waiting on a papal conclave.

One version dressed Rubio for Greenland. Another put him in blaze orange hunting gear with a shotgun after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced he would not seek re-election.

A different panel gave the joke its own plea for mercy. “Please stop making memes about me,” it read.

The real photo sat in the middle of the frame: Rubio sunk low into an Oval Office couch earlier this year, hands locked together, wearing the look that launched countless online edits.

Trump signed that unaltered centerpiece in gold ink with a two-word verdict. “You are great,” the president wrote.

The White House gave Rubio the collage in May, but the gag got wider attention this week after Axios reporter Marc Caputo posted a photo of it on X.

Rubio has had time to make peace with the image. “The meme thing, you know, was interesting, ’cause when it first came out, I hated that picture,” he recently told Lara Trump on Fox News’ “My View.”

The couch, he suggested, deserved some of the blame. “If you don’t have a pillow behind your back, you kinda sink,” Rubio said.

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Whatever discomfort came first eventually gave way to surrender.

“And then it turned into this other thing, and it was fine. And it’s funny,” he said.

White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino had already made the online joke tangible before the birthday frame entered public view.

“Dan Scavino made a nice board for me,” Rubio said. “And even since he made that board, we had to update it.”

The running joke fits Rubio’s real Trump-era workload.

He serves as secretary of state and acting national security adviser, after previously pulling temporary duty as acting archivist and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The meme began with an Oval Office meeting that included Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Rubio, other administration officials and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February of last year.

Instead of fading as one photo from one meeting, Rubio’s couch pose became the internet’s answer to every new vacancy or imagined promotion.

When Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro was captured, meme Rubio showed up ready to take over the country.

By the time the White House put 68 versions of him under glass, the joke had become official décor.

Rubio’s latest burst of public self-mockery did not stop with the framed meme.

On “The Katie Miller Podcast” Tuesday, he appeared with his wife, Jeanette, and turned Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reported diet into a sauerkraut punchline.

“This is a crazy diet,” Rubio said in jest. “This is a diet that consists of eating sauerkraut and meat.”

“Now you understand, like, this is not a sustainable thing … He has to travel with coolers of sauerkraut!” he remarked.

“I’m not going to travel the world with a cooler full of sauerkraut. It’s ridiculous. I can’t do it.”

Rubio made clear that he supports Kennedy’s “MAHA,” or “Make America Healthy Again,” movement. Jeanette still called out his own snack habits.

“No, I don’t eat Pop-Tarts every day,” Rubio said.

“You eat sweets,” Jeanette said.

“The Pop-Tart is one of the great American innovations in the history of the world, if you think about it. It comes in this beautiful foil package,” Rubio joked.

His wife’s review was less glowing. “He eats all the things you should not be eating. Like every single thing,” Jeanette said.

Rubio also remembered trying keto about five years ago and said the loss of carbs and sugar felt like a “near-psychotic event.”

He imagined what that kind of withdrawal would do inside the White House.

“If I did this in this job, I would be, ‘Mr. President, we must bomb, you know –– Paraguay.’ And it’s like, ‘Why?’” Rubio quipped. “‘I don’t know, I’m just really mad. I haven’t had any sugar.’”

Rubio added that he was not trying to ban Kennedy’s preferred diet.

“The point is … I’m not against this diet. I’m not asking that we ban it. I encourage people to try it. I’m just saying it’s not for everyone,” he added.

After discussing his sugar habits, Rubio moved on to his preference in shark movies.

Rubio said his young nephew had asked to watch “Jaws,” but the secretary of state offered what he considered a better pick.

“I said I have an even better movie than ‘Jaws,’ ‘Jaws’ is boring. ‘Sharknado,’” Rubio explained.

Jeanette did not exactly endorse the choice. “Oh, my gosh, it was such a ridiculous movie! Such a ridiculous — who puts that — for kids?”

Rubio focused on the “Sharknado” installment set in Washington, D.C., where sharks reach the White House and the reflecting pool.

“There’s a ‘Sharknado,’ I think it’s number three, that’s in Washington, D.C., and the sharks are in the White House and there’s a president that’s shooting at them and all that — which all sounds crazy, but now you can see — actually, there’s a scene where the sharks are in the reflecting pool!” Rubio explained.

The idea left him thinking Trump should see it.

“So I’m like, man, I gotta show this to the president,” Rubio laughed. “You know, we might have a feature here for people. Can you imagine? If we put sharks in the reflecting pool. Oh, gosh. Anyway.”

By the end, Rubio seemed to know the conversation had wandered far from the usual Cabinet interview.

“This whole thing’s off the rails,” Rubio told Jeanette, before turning to Miller. “You’re not going to be able to even air this thing.”

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