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CBS journalist Margaret Brennan was rebuked Sunday after she claimed that free speech was “weaponized” in Germany to carry out the Holocaust during a back-and-forth with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The two sparred over Vice President JD Vance’s fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference where he slammed European leaders for censorship and said “the threat from within” posed the greatest danger to the security of the West rather than Russia or China.
Rubio was quick to defend the veep after Brennan asked about the remarks that irked US allies and Vance’s reported meeting with a far-right German leader ahead of the country’s chancellor’s election.
“Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion? We are, after all, democracies,” Rubio said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“And so, I think if anyone’s angry about his words, they don’t have to agree with him, but to be angry about it, I think actually makes his point,” he added.
Brennan, 44, then offered a historically dubious response.
“Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide, and he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups,” she said. “The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that.”
Rubio, 53, quickly cut in and strenuously objected.
“No, I have — I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide,” the former US senator said.
“The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they — they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews.
“There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none,” Rubio added.
Vance, 40, weighed in on the exchange later Sunday.
“This is a crazy exchange,” he tweeted. “Does the media really think the holocaust was caused by free speech?”
White House communication director Steven Cheung also took a shot at Brennan.
“Margaret Brennan of CBS News is going through some bizarre episode as she makes disgusting excuses for Nazis and the Holocaust.”
