Marco Rubio Jokes About Bombing Paraguay

The Weekly Post | 19.08.26

TOP STORY

Paraguay as a punchline

by Laurence Blair

Paraguay is used to being the butt of jokes: a pop culture byword for somewhere so faraway and obscure that merely mentioning it provokes a smile.

It’s often a throwaway reference — in The Office, Gilmore Girls, Anaconda, and Wedding Crashers — or a place to run away and hide, as in Mark Knopfler’s Postcards from Paraguay or Iggy Pop’s Paraguay.

Comparing the dismal health insurance of the United States to the generous welfare states of Canada, Europe and Japan, Homer Simpson tells Marge: “You can thank your lucky stars we don't live in Paraguay.”

But when the man reaching for the P-word punchline is the second-most powerful person in the Western Hemisphere — a man operating as Donald Trump’s de facto Viceroy of Venezuela, starving Cuba of fuel, and defending the bombing of alleged “narcoboats” off South American shores — it hits a little different.

Appearing on the podcast of former Trump administration staffer Katie Miller on 11 August, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described how he had undergone the high-protein keto diet a few years ago.

“You go through this massive withdrawal from sugar and carbohydrates for the first 72 hours,” the US secretary of state chuckled. “It was a near-psychotic event for me.”

“It’s true”, laughs his wife, Jeanette, seated next to him.

“Like, if I did it in this job,” the US foreign policy chief continued, “I would be, ‘Mr. President, we must bomb — you know, you know — Paraguay.’”

“And it’s like, ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t know, I’m just really mad; I haven’t had any sugar.’”

The cautionary anecdote from Rubio, whom Miller described as “the funniest person in the administration,” was quick to catch press attention in Paraguay.

ABC Color called it an “unusual joke”. The tabloid Extra suggested that Rubio’s trigger-happy hangriness made him pirevai. El Nacional noted that the attempt at humour “took on a different dimension” coming from Trump’s top diplomat.

But from Paraguay’s government, which had just days previously demanded explanations from Brazilian president Lula over his comments regarding a nineteenth century war? Crickets.

THE POST TAKE

If Rubio’s low blood sugar has failed to trigger a diplomatic incident, it’s probably because the idea of the US launching an attack on Paraguay — its top ally in the Southern Cone — seems obviously ludicrous.

The government of Santiago Peña has marched in lockstep with the Trump administration: signing deals on military cooperation and critical minerals, designating Brazilian gangs and Islamist groups as terrorists, sticking up for Taiwan, cosying up to Israel, and turning its back on China.

Mere days before his Katie Miller Pod appearance, Rubio had signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with his Paraguayan counterpart, Rubén Ramírez Lezcano. Bombs probably wouldn’t mix too well with the small nuclear reactors envisioned as helping to power the smaller country once its hydropower runs out.

Yet Rubio’s department recently put out a bellicose video defending the Monroe Doctrine and asserting that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never again be questioned”.

And as the US military campaign against so-called narcoterrorists across the hemisphere heats up — including a murky series of bombings in Ecuador on land and at sea, with more operations planned for Colombia, Bolivia and Central America — some are on high alert for signs that Paraguay could be next.

The Peña administration has sought to pour cold water on the idea of a US military deployment. Top officials say deploying foreign troops in Paraguay for crime-fighting in border areas would violate national sovereignty and risk further provoking Lula’s Brazil, Paraguay’s top economic partner.

Watch the clip, and you can almost see the Cuban-American former senator and 2028 hopeful scrambling to think of a country that he can joke about bombing without causing a geopolitical crisis. Paraguay — relatively small, distant, and desperately eager to please the White House — fits the bill.

Yet many a true word is spoken in jest. And few would have guessed a year ago that Trump could invade Venezuela to kidnap Nicolás Maduro, wipe out Iran’s senior leadership in a lightning bombardment, or come to the brink of war with Denmark over Greenland. Rubio was surely joking. Right?

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