Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said Wednesday that he regrets voting to confirm Marco Rubio as secretary of state.
Rubio, a former senator from Florida, was unanimously confirmed by the Senate for the position in January.
However, recent moves, including his emphatic support of Trump’s plan to have the United States ‘take over’ Gaza is causing senators like Van Hollen to regret casting their vote for Rubio.
In an interview with CNN on Wednesday Van Hollen said Trump “lit a fire and thrown it on a keg of gasoline” with his plan to build new settlements for Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip, and for the U.S. to take ownership in redeveloping Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
“What’s happening in Gaza, what’s happening in the Middle East, is already a tinderbox,” Van Hollen said. “It’s already on fire, and what he is doing is going to spread that fire. He has essentially called for what amounts to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the forced removal of two million Palestinians to other areas.”
Van Hollen said he was “extremely disappointed” to see Rubio support this “insane wrong idea which effectively is calling for ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
“My one vote I cast for a member of the Trump cabinet was for now Secretary Rubio,” he added. “I regret to say that I regret that vote, because, once installed in office, he is essentially abandoning the positions that he took here as a United States senator.”
