The 53-year-old Florida senator, now on his third term, has one valuable asset but not much else.
Kyle Khan-Mullins joins 'Forbes Talks' with Forbes reporter Brittany Lewis to share Marco Rubio's net worth.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2024/11/13/heres-how-little-trumps-pick-for-secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-is-worth/
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Kyle Khan-Mullins joins 'Forbes Talks' with Forbes reporter Brittany Lewis to share Marco Rubio's net worth.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2024/11/13/heres-how-little-trumps-pick-for-secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-is-worth/
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
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Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is my Forbes
00:07colleague, Money in Politics reporter Kyle Kahn Mullins. Kyle, thanks so much for joining
00:11me.
00:12Always good to be here, Brittany.
00:16President-elect Donald Trump has been fast and furious at nominating members for his
00:20cabinet. There is one person who has received bipartisan praise, and that person is Senator
00:25Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. Just a decade ago, if we can believe it, Marco
00:30Rubio was running against Donald Trump for president. Now Trump nominated him to be the
00:35top diplomat in the country. So he did start at humble beginnings. Who is Marco Rubio?
00:43Marco Rubio has got a bit of an American dream story, honestly. He is the son of Cuban immigrants.
00:48They fled the Batista regime before the Cuban Revolution. He was born in Miami, went to
00:54college, went to the University of Florida, and then to the University of Miami for law
00:57school. He racked up a ton of student debt in that process, and we're going to talk a
01:00little bit more about his finances later. And then he went right into local politics.
01:04He says he was interested in politics because he saw what communism did to his ancestor's
01:09native country, and he didn't want that to happen here. So he went into local politics.
01:16Initially, he got a seat on the city commission, his local city commission, then won a state
01:21house seat in 2000. By 2006, he was the speaker of the Florida House. He was the first Latino
01:26speaker of the Florida House. And then he ran for an open Senate seat in 2010. He won
01:31a three-way race. One of his opponents was a Democratic congressman. The other was the
01:37sitting governor of the state, Charlie Crist, running as an independent. He won that three-way
01:41race in the sort of Tea Party wave that year. And from there has cast himself as an interesting
01:49political evolution over the years. I think he used to be considered more of a moderate
01:53Republican. He sort of spearheaded bipartisan immigration reform that didn't end up passing.
01:58And then in more recent years has become a little bit more Trumpy, I would say. He ran
02:03against Trump in 2016, but by 2024, he is a loyal Trump backer.
02:08I want to get into the senator's finances here. And you recall back in 2015, Donald
02:13Trump said this about his finances, quote, he's a disaster with his credit cards, and
02:17he certainly lives above his means. Was Donald Trump right? What did his finances look like
02:23at the time?
02:24Well, it's always a little hard to know exactly what Donald Trump means in any given statement
02:30or moment. He was wrong in the sense that Rubio did not report any credit card debt
02:35at that point in his career. We have his financial disclosures from that point from the Senate.
02:39He didn't have any sort of large credit card bills that were outstanding. Whether he lived
02:43above his means is another question. He did have a lot of debt at the time. His house
02:48was at Forbes, Forbes assessed at the time that his house was worth less than he owed
02:53on it, which is never a good, never a good situation to be in. So he repeatedly tapped
02:58his house for cash. And overall, Forbes estimated he was worth only about $100,000 at that point
03:04in his life, in large part because of the debt that he racked up on his house and on
03:10a rental property that he owned.
03:12So now let's look at today. He was worth about $100,000 back then. But now in 2024,
03:18how much is Forbes estimating that he's worth?
03:24Forbes is estimating that he is now most likely a millionaire. And the vast majority of that
03:28is because of one really smart real estate move that he made just a couple of years ago.
03:33To give you a bit of a sense of things, in 2016 or 2015, when we estimated that he was
03:39worth about $100,000, he actually declared between $135,000 and $400,000 of sort of non-real
03:45estate assets on his financial disclosure. And that's gone down. He's only reporting
03:50between $35,000 and $175,000 today. So his overall holdings haven't gone up that much.
03:58And so you might be asking, well, then how is his net worth so much higher? And the answer
04:02is that he has reconsolidated a lot of that debt. And like I said, there's a real estate
04:07deal that we're going to talk about. He bought a million dollar home in 2021, and it's now
04:11worth $1.75 million is our estimate. That has boosted his net worth considerably.
04:17First let's back up a second. Let's talk about his salary. He serves as a senator now. How
04:22much is he making now? And let's say he does get confirmed to be secretary of state. How
04:26much will he be making then?
04:30The reviewer makes $174,000 as a senator. That's the same as every senator and every
04:35House member, except for a couple of those that are in leadership. That said, if he gets
04:39confirmed and he is expected to get confirmed, he's sort of seen as one of the most mainstream
04:43Trump picks and for the cabinet. And he's senators tend to like to confirm other senators
04:49for the for the cabinet. And if he does get approved, he'll be making over $200,000, which
04:55is the salary of most of the members of the cabinet.
04:58It's nice that we can compare what his fortune was in 2015 to what it was now. So how much
05:04are his non real estate assets worth and how has that changed in almost a decade?
05:11So in addition to his real estate, he's got, like I said, that that his non real estate
05:16assets have dropped pretty considerably. We only have these ranges, so we're not 100 percent
05:20sure exactly how much they are worth in 2015 and how much exactly they're worth today.
05:26But he went from a range of $135,000 to $400,000 to a range of $35,000 to $175,000. That's
05:33a pretty significant drop in that range. And then in addition, we you know, his his
05:38federal pension has gotten significantly more valuable with another roughly decade in public
05:42service. That's probably worth at least a couple of thousand at this point. And so you
05:46add that to his real estate, you add it all together and he's probably worth over a million
05:51dollars.
05:52That is a pretty significant drop. So is there any indication of why you saw this drop this
05:56fall off investments?
06:01The big thing seems to be he had a he had a big influx of cash from his book earnings
06:06in the early 2010s and then spent it down over time. Some of that may have gone toward
06:12paying off debt. It seems like it seems like some of it did, in fact. And some of it may
06:17just be, you know, he's might be spending a little bit of his beans. There's also a
06:20really big thing. A bunch of his kids had hit college. I think it's three of his kids
06:25have now hit college age between those between 2015 and now. And so a lot of money is probably
06:31going out the door, helping send them to school.
06:35And you hinted at his property. Talk about that, because you said that this is what propelled
06:39him to potentially being a millionaire.
06:42Yep. He bought a house in Miami in 2021, moved a little bit further. His old house was very,
06:49very close to the airport. So I'm imagining they moved away in part because of that. They
06:55bought about a million dollar house in Miami in twenty one. It's now worth one point seven
06:59five million. And so even as they've been paying down that mortgage over the past couple
07:05of years, the house has almost doubled in value. That has really boosted the net worth.
07:11And you said earlier that he's penned a few books. How much was he making off of them?
07:15And has that been consistent in the past decade?
07:20And more off his first book than any of his other than his other two that he's released
07:24since his first book was a memoir about his upbringing in his life.
07:29He got an eight hundred thousand dollar advance for that. And then since then, he's released
07:34two more books and he's probably made about six hundred thousand dollars since 2015.
07:38So all in all, we're looking at over what's that over one point four million dollars total
07:44in book income over the past couple of years.
07:47Marco Rubio has had a really interesting career trajectory when it comes to politics,
07:52because when we remember when he was debating Donald Trump, when he was running against
07:56Donald Trump, Trump really released this brutal nickname on him, Little Marco Rubio.
08:01Now, nine years later, Trump is tapping him to be his top diplomat.
08:06So talk about this trajectory a bit. What type of diplomat do you think Marco Rubio
08:10is going to be? Do his foreign policy views align with Trump's?
08:17So, again, with the caveat that Trump is always a little bit hard to pin down on any given
08:21issue, especially with foreign policy, very complicated, sometimes a little bit harder
08:24to pin him down than most. It does seem like Rubio and Trump are kind
08:28of peas in a pod when it comes to foreign policy.
08:31So, for example, Trump has expressed skepticism of sending additional aid to Ukraine.
08:36Marco Rubio has endorsed that position. He was initially a backer of Ukraine, but has
08:40as Trump has become more critical of the country and of the aid that we're giving them, Rubio
08:44has backed off as well. Additionally, he's a major Iran hawk, very
08:49skeptical of the Iranian regime. Same with Trump.
08:53Those two align very closely. They're also both steadfast on Israel and its
08:56war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
09:03And the Trump administration was pretty, had pretty harsh sanctions and other crackdowns
09:08on the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, both left-leaning dictatorships, excuse me.
09:17That is right up Rubio's alley. Like I said, he's been a critic of the Cuban
09:21regime and of the Venezuelan regime since he's been in politics.
09:26Should he get confirmed based on past secretaries of state, does Marco Rubio's financial future
09:32look bright? Yeah, absolutely.
09:37These kinds of cabinet positions can definitely set people up for, even if they don't go back
09:42to an elected office afterwards, can set them up for really big paydays.
09:47Look no further than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
09:51She made millions of dollars from speaking engagements, books, all these kinds of things.
09:56UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, she got a board seat on Boeing.
10:00Again, speeches, books. There are plenty of paths available for ex-administration
10:07officials once they're out of office. Kyle Conn-Mullins, per usual, thank you for
10:12your reporting. Always great to be here. Thanks again.