Secretary State Marco Rubio vehemently objected to CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan’s clumsy suggestion “free speech” was “weaponized” by Nazi Germany to conduct genocide on Jews during the Holocaust.
“I have to disagree with you: Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide,” Rubio shot back at Brennan. “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. 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.”
Brennan was attempting to get Rubio to criticize Vice President J.D. Vance’s Munich, Germany speech where he called out Europe for silencing free speech under the guise stopping hate speech.
“Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion?” Rubio said. “We are, after all, democracies. The Munich Security Conference is largely a conference of democracies, in which one of the things that we cherish and value is the ability to speak freely and provide your opinions. 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.
“I thought it was actually a pretty historic speech. Whether you agree with him or not, I think the valid points he’s making to Europe is we are concerned that the true values that we share, the values that bind us together with Europe, are things like free speech and democracy and our shared history in winning two World Wars and defeating Soviet communism and the like. These are values that we’ve shared in common. And in that Cold War, we fought against things like censorship and oppression and so forth.
“The point of his speech was basically that there is an erosion in free speech and in tolerance for opposing points of view within Europe, and that’s of concern because that is eroding – it’s not an erosion of your military capabilities. That’s not an erosion of your economic standing. That’s an erosion of the actual values that bind us together in this transatlantic union that everybody talks about.
“And I think allies and friends and partners that have worked together now for 80 years should be able to speak frankly to one another in open forums without being offended, insulted, or upset. And I spoke to foreign ministers from multiple countries throughout Europe. Many of them probably didn’t like the speech or didn’t agree with it, but they were continuing to engage with us on all sorts of issues that unite us.”
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