Brennan controversy just the latest black eye for CBS News on issues related to Jews and Israel
CBS News host Margaret Brennan has not publicly addressed her controversial exchange with Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the weekend, in which the anchor claimed that the Holocaust occurred because Nazis “weaponized” free speech. But Brennan has found time to weigh in on other anti-Trump news events.
Brennan, who hosts Face the Nation, sparked widespread backlash after she pressed Rubio over Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech in Germany last week, in which he accused European leaders of censoring and criminalizing free speech.
Brennan said Vance’s remarks accomplished little more than “irritating our allies,” and asserted that Vance “was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.”
Rubio pushed back. “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.”
Vance called out Brennan over the “crazy exchange,” and asked: “Does the media really think the holocaust [sic] was caused by free speech?”
This is a crazy exchange.
Does the media really think the holocaust was caused by free speech? https://t.co/EBUKx75Wfm
— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 16, 2025
Brennan has not addressed criticism of the interview. But she has returned to social media to promote stories critical of the Trump administration.
Brennan reposted tweets about negotiations to end the Ukraine-Russia war, as well as passages from a lawsuit that anonymous USAID employees have filed over the administration’s plans to dramatically downsize the foreign aid agency.
The employees are represented by Democracy Forward Foundation, a liberal nonprofit chaired by Marc Elias, the controversial Democratic lawyer best known for commissioning the anti-Trump Steele dossier.
Brennan’s remarks about the Holocaust are the latest black eye for CBS News on issues related to Jews and Israel. And it comes amid Trump’s lawsuit against CBS over its edits to a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris in October. The version of the interview that aired on television edited out Harris’s rambling answer to a question on how to end the Israel-Hamas war.
Last August, CBS News executives ordered reporters not to refer to Jerusalem as part of Israel because Palestinians claim the holy city as their own. In October, CBS brass publicly criticized host Tony Dokoupil over his contentious interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates over his anti-Israel book, The Message. Network executives said the interview, in which Dokoupil grilled Coates for omitting references to terrorist groups that want to annihilate Israel, failed to meet the network’s editorial standards.
Days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Brennan suggested in an interview with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that Palestinian Arabs cannot be anti-Semitic because “all Arabs are Semites.”
Brennan, who took over Face the Nation in 2018, has had several contentious exchanges with Vance. Vance and Brennan tangled during the vice presidential debate in October after Brennan attempted to fact-check Vance on the legal status of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Vance noted that Brennan had agreed that moderators would not do live fact-checks during the debate. He also pointed out that many of the Haitian immigrants in Springfield entered the United States illegally.
They had a particularly testy interaction in an interview last month over the administration’s pause on a program for Afghan refugees. Vance said the program needs more rigorous vetting, citing the arrest of an Afghan national who plotted a terrorist attack on Election Day.
Brennan said it was unclear if the suspect was radicalized before or after he came to the United States in 2021.
“I don’t really care, Margaret,” said Vance.
CBS News did not respond to a request for comment.
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