‘No, No, No!’ Marco Rubio Tussles With Margaret Brennan Over JD Vance’s Munich Speech, Meeting With Germany’s Far-Right Party
Secretary of State Marco Rubio tussled with CBS News host Margaret Brennan on Sunday about Vice President JD Vance’s Thursday speech in Munich and his meeting with the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Brennan connected the party to extremism and challenged Vance’s controversial comments to European allies on the issue of free speech. Rubio blasted a notion that Vance was out of line by telling US allies their biggest threat came not from Russia but from “within.”
On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Brennan made a note of Vance’s Munich Security Conference “lecture” and asked Rubio to respond.
“He also met with the leader of a far-right party known as the AfD, which, as you know, is under investigation and monitoring by German intelligence because of extremism,” she said. “What did all of this accomplish, other than irritating our allies?”
Rubio replied, “Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion?” He added the country’s European allies should be committed to free speech and that Vance rightly challenged European countries not to stifle free expression:
He simply expressed in a speech his view of it, which a lot of people frankly share, and I thought he said a lot of things in that speech that needed to be said. And honestly, I don’t know why anybody would be upset about it. People are – you don’t have to agree on someone’s speech. I happen to agree with a lot of what he said, but you don’t have to agree with someone’s speech to at least appreciate the fact they have a right to say it and that you should listen to it and see whether those criticisms are valid.
Brennan responded by citing the Nazi Party’s weaponizing of free speech “to conduct a genocide” while hitting Vance for meeting with Afd c-chair Alice Weidel. Rubio and Brennan tussled in the follwing exchange:
BRENNAN: 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. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.
RUBIO: Well, I have to disagree with you.
[CROSSTALK]
RUBIO: No, no.
[CROSSTALK]
RUBIO: No, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. 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 had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So, that’s not an accurate reflection of history.
Watch above via CBS News.
