U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has come to the defense of Vice President J.D. Vance, who delivered a controversial speech on Friday accusing European leaders of censorship and opening the “floodgates” to millions of immigrants.
The speech drew the ire of European leaders at the Munich Security Conference, including European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.
In an interview with CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation on Sunday, Rubio said European allies had no reason to be “angry” about Vance’s remarks.
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“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,” Rubio said. “So I think if anyone’s angry about his word, they don’t have to agree with him, but to be angry about it, I think, actually, makes this point.”
“I thought it was actually a pretty historic speech, whether you agree with him or not,” he added.
On the sidelines of the conference, the vice president met with Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, just over a week before the country goes to the polls in a historic election.
The anti-immigrant party has come under investigation for extremism by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency and was fined for using Nazi slogans.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the meeting.
“A commitment to ‘never again’ is therefore incompatible with support for the AfD,” Scholz said.
Rubio brushed off the outrage from European leaders.
“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,” he said.
Brennan snapped back that free speech had enabled genocide in Germany under Adolf Hitler.
“[Vance] was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide,” she said, adding that the vice president “met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups.”
Rubio said he disagreed with Brennan’s interpretation of historical events.
“Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide,” he said. “The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities.”
“There was no free speech in Nazi Germany,” he added.
Vance blasted Brennan’s questions in a post on X Sunday afternoon.
“This is a crazy exchange,” he said. “Does the media really think the holocaust was caused by free speech?”
