President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state, The New York Times reported late Monday.

Three people were quoted as saying the decision was not final, but Trump appeared to have settled on Rubio, a loyalist whom Trump passed over as his vice presidential running mate.

Rubio has been consistently named over the past week as one of the front-runners to be America's top diplomat, along with former ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell.

Asked if he was destined for a high-level Cabinet position, Rubio told CNN last week, "I'm always interested in serving this country."

The nomination of the hardline senator, who has Cuban heritage, would cap a marked shift in his relationship with Trump.

In 2016, when they were running for the Republican presidential nomination, Rubio called Trump a "conman" and "the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency."

Rubio was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, and graduated in political science from the University of Florida in 1993.

US President-elect Donald Trump has also chosen Republican Representative Mike Waltz from Florida to be his national security adviser.

By selecting Waltz, Trump is choosing a Special Forces veteran to oversee what promises to be a realignment of the United States’ posture around the world, including the nearly three-year war in Ukraine and the expanding conflict in the Middle East.

Waltz has not played a central role in Trump’s day-to-day campaign, but he has been close to the president-elect and his team since their first term. At the Republican National Convention this summer in Milwaukee, Waltz delivered a powerful speech from the podium praising Trump’s fitness as commander-in-chief while criticizing President Joe Biden’s legacy at the Pentagon and the bloody and confusing withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

This kind of movement between policy and policy planning, coupled with the ability to make the case for Trumpism in a clear and straightforward way, is the kind of double whammy that eluded some of Trump’s former national security advisers in his first term in office, including H.R. McMaster and John Bolton.

Waltz will enter a White House that will be handed the file on the ongoing war in Ukraine on the first day, dozens of nervous allies in Europe to deal with, Trump’s promised plan to end the war on his first day in office, and an ally in Israel that is waging war on several fronts, including directly – for the first time – with Iran.

A longtime China hawk, the 50-year-old retired colonel from the Green Berets and National Guard will also lead the charge in formulating plans to counter China’s massive military buildup, which Trump and his team have made a key part of the campaign.

Waltz, who spent time as a policy official at the Pentagon and the White House, has also been front and center in the military’s culture wars and in criticizing Biden’s foreign policies from his perch on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees.

As a congressman, Waltz was a frequent visitor to the White House during Trump’s first term, advising him on national security issues behind the scenes, and quietly became one of the then-president’s closest advisers on defense issues. Before being tapped as national security adviser, he was also a top candidate to be Trump’s defense secretary.