Marco Rubio now holds 2 top jobs. Just one other politician has done the same

In addition to his existing position, Secretary of State Marco Rubio now is taking on the role of national security adviser — giving him a sweeping portfolio previously only held by one other person in U.S. history.

President Donald Trump announced on May 1 that Rubio would serve as his interim national security adviser — the president’s chief counselor on national security issues — replacing Mike Waltz, who was tapped to be ambassador to the United Nations.

“Marco’s very busy doing other things, so he’s not going to keep it long term,” Trump said in a May 4 interview with NBC News.

However, he left the door open to this possibility, saying, “Henry Kissinger did both. There’s a theory that you don’t need two people.”

Kissinger, who died in 2023, was the only other official to serve concurrently as both secretary of state and national security advisor. However, his experience can be looked at as something of a cautionary tale, historians said.

Kissinger’s two hats

Kissinger, a German-born political scientist, was appointed national security adviser by President Richard Nixon in 1969.

In this role, he would “brief the president regularly on the state of the world, combining information from other critical agencies and departments,” David Farber, a history professor at the University of Kansas, told McClatchy News.

Then, in 1973, Nixon also tapped him to serve as secretary of state — the nation’s chief diplomat — following the resignation of William Rogers amid the Watergate scandal.

At the time, this combination of roles was unprecedented, Thomas Balcerski, a presidential historian at Eastern Connecticut State University, told McClatchy News.

“Traditionally, presidents have relied on different individuals for their various Cabinet-level appointments,” Balcerski said.

So why was Kissinger chosen to serve in two high-ranking positions simultaneously? It had to do with trust, control and a shared vision, historians said.

“In Nixon’s mind, Kissinger’s double role wasn’t about efficiency but about centralizing foreign policy in one reliable person’s hands,” Taylor Stoermer, a history lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, told McClatchy News.

“Nixon trusted Kissinger more than anyone at the State Department — maybe more than anyone, period,” Alexis Coe, a presidential historian at the think tank New America, told McClatchy News. “Nixon liked to conduct foreign policy from the White House, with the fewest possible people in the room. Kissinger, fluent in back channels and fond of control, fit perfectly.”

The president and Kissinger were so closely linked that people took to calling them the “duo” or the “team,” Balcerski said.

But, in 1975, following Nixon’s resignation, President Gerald Ford removed Kissinger as national security adviser — though he stayed on as head of the state department.

In explaining his decision, Ford said, “When Kissinger had both State and NSC, there was not an independent evaluation of proposals, and I never liked that arrangement that I inherited,” according to Balcerski.

Cautionary tale

“Kissinger is a precedent, but he’s also a warning,” Stoermer said.

For one, both jobs require immense amounts of work — making succeeding at both difficult, historians said.

“It is truly overwhelming to do both,” Vernon Burton, a professor of history at Clemson University, told McClatchy News.

Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton recently said as much, telling MSNBC News it is “almost impossible” to handle both roles.

Additionally, by serving as both secretary of state and national security adviser, Kissinger consolidated immense power for himself.

“It was a rare, arguably alarming concentration of power in one unelected official,” Coe said.

“For a time, it worked, but the optics were always terrible,” she added. “One man controlling both diplomacy and national security? Congress didn’t love it. The public liked it even less.”

This story was originally published May 5, 2025 at 5:10 PM with the headline "Marco Rubio now holds 2 top jobs. Just one other politician has done the same."