CBS journalist Margaret Brennan faced swift backlash Sunday after making an outrageous and historically inaccurate claim that free speech was “weaponized” to enable the Holocaust. The comment came during a heated exchange with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Face the Nation, in which Brennan displayed a shocking lack of understanding of Nazi Germany.
The controversy erupted as Rubio defended Vice President JD Vance, who had criticized European censorship in a fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference. Brennan, however, suggested that free speech had been used as a tool for genocide in Nazi Germany—a claim so factually absurd that even seasoned political figures were stunned.
Brennan, 44, tried to frame Vance’s defense of free speech as problematic, arguing: “Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.”
Rubio immediately shut her down, calling out her complete lack of historical knowledge.
“No, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide,” Rubio shot back. “The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and minorities.”
Then came the crushing reality check: “There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none.”
Indeed, Nazi Germany was a brutal dictatorship where dissent was violently crushed, the press was state-controlled, and those who spoke out against Hitler were jailed or executed. For Brennan—a supposedly seasoned journalist—to suggest otherwise is not just ignorant, but an insult to history itself.
Vance himself took to X to slam Brennan’s absurd take.
“This is a crazy exchange. Does the media really think the Holocaust was caused by free speech?”
Even White House Communications Director Steven Cheung weighed in, blasting Brennan’s comments as “bizarre” and “disgusting.”
“Margaret Brennan of CBS News is going through some bizarre episode as she makes disgusting excuses for Nazis and the Holocaust,” he wrote.
For the record, Nazi Germany was one of the most oppressive regimes in modern history, where:
- Dissent was outlawed—speaking against the government could land someone in a concentration camp.
- The press was strictly controlled, with only Nazi-approved propaganda allowed.
- Jews, political opponents, and intellectuals were silenced through arrests, book burnings, and violence.
The Nazis didn’t “weaponize” free speech—they destroyed it, along with millions of lives.
Brennan’s stunning ignorance on national television is a disgrace to journalism and a gross insult to Holocaust victims. She should apologize immediately—or better yet, pick up a history book.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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3 Responses
Liberals wanna shut down right wing speech and ideas. So anything that comes from the right, must be from “free speech”, meaning not censored by liberals.
This problem arises so many times, in history, where people project their perspective on history based off if modern times.
I could give 10 example right now off the bat
The same radical twisted Margaret Brennan, a true Israelophobe, has suggested another historical and factual error in 10.15.23. Reacting to DeSantis who said, “palestinians” are antisemities, so Brennan, in her Sunday talk show ‘Face the Nation’ she argued “I’m sure you know all Arabs are Semites.”
Does Brennan not know that Arab leadership of “palestine” hooked up with Hitler? That ‘Mein Kampf’ was a best seller among palestine-Arabs in 1937…and as is right now too? Was Emil Ghuri not a semite when he wrote on his ‘Arab Federation’ on July 7, 1934: “Hitler, whom the Arabs admire very much”? Or Ahmad Shukeiri when he wrote in 1969 that they prayed, cheered for Hitler? Or PLO’s Farouk Qaddoumi in 2013 admitting – “palestinians” supported Nazis, for both were against Zionists?
Doesn’t she know – That the ‘New York Times’ reported on May 23, 1937 that All Arabs in “palestine” celebreated Muhammad’s birthday with images of Hitler and Mussolini and with swastikas? That 88% of Arabs in “palestine” polled in Feb 1941 were pro Nazis? The June-1941 Farhud Arab-Nazi pogrom in Iraq? That 93% polled “palestinians” in 2014 showed to be antisemitic?
The msm is sooo hopelessly pathetic and sooo gone there is no hope for them.