Joe.My.God. LGBT News
MARGARET BRENNAN: “I want to ask you about what happened in Munich, Germany, at the Security Conference. Vice President Vance gave a speech, and he told U.S. allies that the threat he worries about the most is not Russia, it is not China.
“He called it the ‘threat from within,’ and he lectured about what he described as censorship, mainly focusing, though, on including more views from the right.
“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. What did all of this accomplish, other than irritating our allies?”
SECRETARY RUBIO: “Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion? 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 the values that we shared in common, and in that cold war we fought against things like censorship and oppression and so forth, and when you see backsliding, and you raise that, that’s a very valid concern.
“We can’t tell them how to run their countries. 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.
“I assure you, the United States has come under withering criticism on many occasions from many leaders in Europe, and we don’t go around throwing temper tantrums about it.”
MARGARET 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–“
SECRETARY RUBIO: “Well, I have to disagree with you. No, 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- they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none.”