Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended Vice President JD Vance's speech in Germany slamming Europe's penchant for censorship on Sunday.
Rubio clashed with CBS host Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation" after she suggested that free speech had been "weaponized" to bring about the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
Brennan highlighted Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference in Germany last week, which criticized European allies for adopting a "soviet"-style approach to censorship.
"What did all of this accomplish, other than irritating our allies?" Brennan asked.
"Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion? We are, after all, democracies," Rubio said. "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."
"Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide," Brennan replied. "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."
"Well, I have to disagree with you. No - I have, I have to disagree with you," Rubio said as the pair talked over one another. "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 had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews."
He added, "There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were the sole and only party that governed that country. So that's not an accurate reflection of history."
Rubio went on to reiterate Vance's point that European leaders should be able to continue working with the U.S. and other like-minded nations despite facing criticism, at which point Brennan ended the segment.
Austrian authorities said Sunday that the suspect who they believe fatally stabbed a 14-year-old boy and wounded five others in the village of Villach is a Syrian refugee who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
At a press conference, Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said the 23-year-old Syrian national was arrested seven minutes after Saturday's attack unfolded in the village of just about 60,000 people bordering Italy and Slovenia.
"This is an Islamist attack with an IS connection by an attacker who radicalized himself within a very short time via the internet online," Karner told reporters, according to the Associated Press.
Regarding mass migration and asylum-seekers, Karner, a conservative, said it will ultimately be necessary to "carry out a mass screening without cause because this assassin was not conspicuous."
"There's compassion, there's sadness, but in these moments there's also understandably often anger and rage," Karner added, according to Reuters. "Anger at an Islamist attacker who randomly stabbed innocent people here in this town."
The attack came a day after Vice President JD Vance rebuked European leaders at the Munich Security Conference over mass migration, as well as crackdowns on free speech.
As authorities revealed the alleged "Islamic terror motive," Austria's far-right leader Herbert Kickl, whose party won a national election four months ago, called for "a rigorous crackdown on asylum" in the wake of the attack.
Kickl wrote on X Saturday that he is "appalled by the horrific act in Villach."
"At the same time, I am angry – angry at those politicians who have allowed stabbings, rapes, gang wars and other capital crimes to become the order of the day in Austria. This is a first-class failure of the system, for which a young man in Villach has now had to pay with his life," Kickl said.
"From Austria to the EU – the wrong rules are in force everywhere. Nobody is allowed to challenge them, everything is declared sacrosanct," he said, adding that his party had outlined what he viewed as necessary changes to immigration laws in its election platform.
The suspect is charged with murder and attempted murder. Austrian police said the suspect recorded himself pledging allegiance to IS, according to Reuters.
State police director Michaela Kohlweiß said authorities searched the suspect’s apartment with sniffer dogs and found IS flags on the walls.
No weapons or dangerous objects were found, she added, but police seized mobile telephones. Police were investigating whether the suspect had any accomplices.
"The current picture is that of a lone perpetrator," Kohlweiß said, according to the AP.
Carinthia State Gov. Peter Kaiser thanked another Syrian national, a 42-year-old man working for a food delivery company, who drove toward the suspect and helped prevent the situation from getting worse.
"This shows how closely terrorist evil but also human good can be united in one and the same nationality," Kaiser said.
The mayor of Villach, Guenther Albel, said the attack was a "stab in the heart of the city."
Austrian conservative party leader Christian Stocker said on X that the attacker "must be brought to justice and be punished with the full force of the law."
"We all want to live in a safe Austria, adding that this means political measures need to be taken to avoid such acts of horror in the future," he said.
The day before Vance visited the Munich Security Conference, an Afghan refugee on Thursday plowed a car into a crowd in the German city, injuring dozens of people, including a mother and her 2-year-old daughter, who later died.
"The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone, and of course, it's gotten much higher since," Vance said Friday. "It's the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent. Others across the world over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And of course, I can't bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place?"
"It's a terrible story, but it's one we've heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well," Vance said. "An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?"
The stabbing in Villach on Saturday marked what is believed to be the second deadly Islamic terror attack in Austria in recent years. In November 2020, a man who had previously attempted to join the Islamic State carried out a rampage in Vienna, armed with an automatic rifle and a fake explosive vest, killing four people before being fatally shot by police. Last August, Austrian authorities said they thwarted a planned attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna by a teenager who had also allegedly pledged allegiance to IS.
Vice President JD Vance left U.K. army veteran Adam Smith-Connor "incredibly surprised" after his story of being arrested for silently praying outside an abortion clinic became the focus of a defense of free speech and religious liberty on the international stage over the weekend.
"I had no idea it was going to happen," Smith-Connor said Sunday on "Fox & Friends Weekend."
"I'm a physiotherapist. I was treating a patient. I just had a few minutes' gap between patients… and [I learned] the vice president of America was talking about [my] case, so it was incredibly surprising, and I'm very grateful to him for highlighting this case."
Smith-Connor was found guilty of breaching the local government's Public Spaces Protection Order in October, nearly two years after standing outside an abortion facility with his head bowed in silent prayer.
He was ordered to pay £9,000 (approximately $11,330 USD) to his prosecutors as a result.
Vance highlighted the case as he blasted 'Soviet'-style European censorship in an address to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference last Friday.
"The backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs," the vice president said.
"A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own."
Lois McLatchie Miller, senior legal communications officer at Alliance Defending Freedom International, informed Smith-Connor of Vance's acknowledgment through a phone call.
She told "Fox & Friends Weekend" co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy thatADF International is supporting his legal defense as they seek to appeal the judgment later this year.
"This intervention from Vice President Vance highlighting the case really exposes that this is the worst example of censorship in the West right now. If we cannot think thoughts in our heads on certain British streets, we have no hope for freedom anywhere else."
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