CBS host clashes with Marco Rubio, claims "free speech" fueled the Holocaust

CBS journalist Margaret Brennan faced backlash yesterday (Sunday) after she claimed that free speech was “weaponized” in Germany to carry out the Holocaust during a tense exchange with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The heated debate stemmed from Vice President JD Vance’s fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference, where he criticized European leaders for censorship and argued that “the threat from within” posed a greater danger to the West’s security than Russia or China.

Rubio quickly came to Vance’s defense when Brennan questioned the remarks that had upset U.S. allies, as well as Vance’s reported meeting with a far-right German leader ahead of the upcoming chancellor election. “Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion? We are, after all, democracies,” Rubio responded 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.”

Brennan then interjected with a historically controversial 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 stated. “The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that.”

Rubio, 53, swiftly interrupted and forcefully disagreed. “No, I have - I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide,” the former U.S. senator countered.

“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.

The New York Post contributed to this article.