CHUCK TODD: The president putting out this tweet, “It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large-scale sanctions would be added to those already existing sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional sanctions.” When asked for an explanation from the White House, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders simply said, “President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.” It was a 24-hour rebuke. What does this incident do for the reliability of the United States on sanctions regimes overall?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Well, I’ve never seen that before from this or any administration, so something happened here. Those things have to usually be approved. In fact, I know that they are. They go through a long inter-agency process, signed off on by the president. So, something happened between the time it was announced and the time that the president put out that statement. I don’t know the answer, to be honest. I don’t know why he would do that or why it happened the way it did. It’s unusual. It’s never happened before.

CHUCK TODD: Does it — does it at all introduce any concern that — will he be there — you know, look, you have talked him into doing more in Venezuela than I think a lot of people expected. Do you trust him now on Venezuela, considering what he just did with North Korea?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Yeah, it’s a little different obviously. I mean, the president is, has been involved in now two one-on-one negotiations with North Korea. … So, I’m not skeptical [about negotiations] because I want it to fail; I’m skeptical because I believe it will fail. Now why — how this happened, look, you have to ask the White House. I don’t know how they issued this and then suddenly he changed his mind. I don’t know the rationale behind it. Maybe it was a good reason. But it certainly is not the way it’s normally done.

CHUCK TODD: But obviously the concern among some national security folks is, “What does this mean? We’re trying to get more of the world to align on sanctions when it comes to Venezuela and Maduro.”

SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Yeah. So, on this part, at least with North Korea, it’s not helpful, right, to have the Treasury Department go out and do something that’s been vetted and discussed. … It doesn’t make a lot of sense that that happened that way. And frankly, look, I think people around the world would look at it and say from now on, when they hear about sanctions, they’re going to want to know if — they’re going to ask for double confirmation from the White House, you know. So, look, I wish it hadn’t happened that way, and it shouldn’t have happened that way.