Newsbusters

Is it news? Or is it political advertising? On Friday afternoon, CNN’s Brianna Keilar promoted anti-gun activists Manuel and Patricia Oliver on the seventh anniversary of the Parkland school shooting. CNN displayed the grieving parents disturbing the peace, yelling at a Biden gun-control event and at a congressional hearing..  

After beginning the pre-recorded piece by recalling that Oliver puts on a play about his son Joaquin to commemorate his death in the Parkland attack, Keilar then got to some of his other activities.

Oliver was arrested after using a crane to erect an image of his son, but was then invited to the White House where he heckled President Biden for not getting more gun laws passed:

KEILAR: On the fourth anniversary of Joaquin’s death, Manny unfurled a sign on a crane near the White House and was arrested for it. But he succeeded in getting then-President Biden’s attention and an invitation to the Oval Office.

OLIVER (shouting at then-President Joe Biden): You have to do more than that!

KEILAR: A few months later, Manny interrupted Biden’s Rose Garden event honoring the passage of gun legislation that was for Manny not ambitious enough.

Then came a clip of his wife Patricia heckling a Republican-led congressional hearing:

KEILAR: In 2023, Manny was arrested at the Capitol after he and Patricia interrupted a Republican-led gun hearing.

PATRICIA OLIVER (shouting at a congressional hearing): You took my son away from me, and I’m not going anywhere.

As the CNN host listed a number of stunts the Olivers had been involved with, through their group Change the Ref, she alluded to the group tricking several pro-gun activists into giving speeches to empty chairs that represented gun deaths:

KEILAR: In 2021, duping a former head of the NRA into giving a graduation speech to empty chairs, symbolizing the estimated 3,044 victims of gun violence who were not alive to graduate that year.

DAVID KEENE, FORMER NRA PRESIDENT (speaking to empty chairs): So my advice to you is, simply enough: Follow your dream and make it a reality.

This badly disguised commercial is a bit of a rerun. Keilar had also promoted this stunt back in June 2021 after it first happened, having the Olivers on CNN’s New Day as guests to discuss it.

Just over five minutes into the six-minute report, Keilar briefly mentioned that Oliver had mocked “thoughts and prayers” condolences by putting quotes by gun rights supporters onto toilet paper. A quote from Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) reacting to the 2022 Uvalde attack could be seen on screen on a roll of toilet paper.

Partial transcript follows:

CNN News Central

February 14, 2025

2:42 p.m. Eastern

BRIANNA KEILAR: This is the artistic disruption that has been Manny and Patricia’s defining approach to advocating for gun violence prevention.

MANUEL OLIVER, CHANGE THE REF: You can try something, and if it’s not working, maybe you should try something different and give it a chance.

KEILAR: On the fourth anniversary of Joaquin’s death, Manny unfurled a sign on a crane near the White House and was arrested for it. But he succeeded in getting then-President Biden’s attention and an invitation to the Oval Office.

OLIVER (shouting at then-President Joe Biden): You have to do more than that!

KEILAR: A few months later, Manny interrupted Biden’s Rose Garden event honoring the passage of gun legislation that was for Manny not ambitious enough. In 2023, Manny was arrested at the Capitol after he and Patricia interrupted a Republican-led gun hearing.

PATRICIA OLIVER (shouting at a congressional hearing): You took my son away from me, and I’m not going anywhere.

KEILAR: At the theater, Patricia walks through an exhibit of viral advertising campaigns the couple has helped produce through their nonprofit called Change the Ref — putting a bullet-proof vest on the famous statue of the Fearless Girl on Wall Street not long after the shooting, asking on social media: “How can she be fearless if she’s afraid to go to school?” Patricia accepting Joaquin’s diploma in a shirt reading, “This should be my son.”

In 2021, duping a former head of the NRA into giving a graduation speech to empty chairs, symbolizing the estimated 3,044 victims of gun violence who were not alive to graduate that year.

DAVID KEENE, FORMER NRA PRESIDENT (speaking to empty chairs): So my advice to you is, simply enough: Follow your dream and make it a reality.

KEILAR: And last year, making an AI deep fake message of Joaquin’s voice and those of other gun violence victims, including from the Uvalde shooting, to send to members of Congress.

AUDIO RECREATION OF SHOOTING VICTIM JOAQUIN OLIVER: I was murdered at school by a shooter with an AR-15 assault rifle. My voice has been recreated using powerful AI technology.

KEILAR: They marketed a video game showing what it’s like to try to escape a school shooting, and “thoughts and prayers” toilet paper.

Making sure all sob stories are fed to the masses, the liberal media are pulling out all the stops to defend and justify the need to keep the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in place (and offer no suggestions for reform). Friday’s NBC Nightly News sent its China-based correspondent Janis Mackey Frayer to Cambodia to declare innocent Cambodians will die without USAID funding for nonprofits to remove landmines from the Vietnam War.

Anchor Lester Holt had the foreboding tease: “We’re back in a moment with the human cost of cutting foreign aid. We take you to Cambodia with life and death consequences.”

Ah, so we’ve moved from kids in Sudan are going to die en masse if they don’t get their only meal (and with the U.N. seemingly nowhere to be found or mentioned) to….people will die in Cambodia due to 50-year-old landmines?

Holt cued to Frayer with the declaration that there’s “chaos…around the world” because of the Trump administration’s desire to shrink the size of government.

This is from Friday’s ‘NBC Nightly News’ – USAID is apparently funding demining for unexploded U.S. landmines in Cambodia from the Vietnam War, so the argument here is that the Trump administration is going to be killing people…. pic.twitter.com/hGZvfr6djv
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 17, 2025
“The delicate and dangerous task of clearing unexploded bombs in Cambodia. Deminers using simple tools and every day finding something,” Frayer began ahead of an interaction with Bill Morse, the head of a mysterious, unnamed nonprofit (Cambodian Self-Help Demining) that receives USAID money to defuse the mines.

After showing a mine being blown up, she explained that “[m]any of the munitions here are American dropped in rampant U.S. bombing during the Vietnam War” and thus the U.S. has “for decades…helped to clean up the mess until President Trump froze all foreign aid for 90 days.”

Of course, Morse was ready to drop the money quote for NBC about what will happen without USAID keeping CSHD funded: “They die. They don’t have a job. It’s going to affect everybody. Nobody knows quite what to do right now.” 

Frayer would later say 65,000 Cambodians are “maimed or worse” by such mines.

Frayer added America “spends about $72 billion a year on foreign aid, much of it delivered through USAID, which was abruptly dismantled, upending every kind of program on the planet, from HIV/AIDS treatment to fighting hunger though a U.S. judge ruled the White House can’t cancel funding already in place.”

Adding there’s a “realtime impact of the stop work order” with “charities facing collapse” (and thus raising questions about whom do they answer to for accountability if they’re all-but government agencies), Frayer fretted “teams are having to scale back, so fewer bombs are getting cleared” with it taking “over two months to clear” just half of a nine-and-a-half-acre field.

She closed on an ominous note: “Already, China is filling funding gaps, pledging $4.4 million to keep demining going here and decades of work still ahead.”

To see the relevant NBC transcript from February 14, click here.

It could be painted as a strange sticking point, the Trump White House blocking access to the Associated Press because it refuses to acknowledge the new geographical term “Gulf of America.” It’s strange that AP would find this to be a battle over some grand principle, and it’s strange to block access for the body-of-water slight.

But Marc Caputo at Axios reports Team Trump has a broader message.

“This isn’t just about the Gulf of America,” White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich told Axios. “This is about AP weaponizing language through their Stylebook to push a partisan worldview in contrast with the traditional and deeply held beliefs of many Americans and many people around the world.”

Naturally, the AP pretends they’re not partisan or ideological. It’s bad enough that Caputo claims AP has “long been considered the gold standard of neutrality.” That’s ridiculous. They’re just as DNC-centered as the rest of the DC press. 

Independent? AP headlines look like the DNC penned them. https://t.co/Fv6V1iUN3B pic.twitter.com/j68N39foIQ
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) February 13, 2025
AP communications veep Lauren Ellis claimed they’re “nonpartisan” and “fact-based.” Leftist outlets don’t get to pretend they’re exactly like they were in 1960.

But this line is the most preposterous: 

It’s not surprising that political parties, organizations or even individuals may disagree with some entries. The Stylebook doesn’t align with any particular agenda.”

There are agendas all over their word-policing. Start with transgenderism. In 2022, the AP Stylebook czars “A person’s sex and gender are usually assigned at birth by parents or attendants and can turn out to be inaccurate. Experts say gender is a spectrum, not a binary structure.” You can’t be less “fact-based” than this.

And the instructions were anti-Republican: “Starting in 2020, conservative-leaning U.S. state legislatures began considering a wave of bills aimed at transgender youths. Many political observers assert that the legislation is being used to motivate voters by falsely framing children as under threat.” 

Later that year, AP instructed their clients not to use “late-term abortion” as if a woman never has an abortion late in their pregnancy. “Instead, use the term ‘abortion later in pregnancy’ if a general term is needed.” An article at that time hailed Team Biden trying to “safeguard abortion access.” 

Administration officials are meeting Tuesday and Wednesday with state lawmakers ahead of their 2023 sessions, including in states with more extreme bans on the table, and will discuss safeguarding rights and helping women access care as top issues

The Left — never identified by ideology — offers “protections” and “care,” and the people trying to save unborn babies are “strict” “strippers” of “rights” with their “restrictions” and “extreme bans.” The AP even used the term “life-saving abortions,” which is much more ridiculous than “late-term abortions.”

AP has choked on “Gulf of America” because they’re a “global” news agency. Their guidance to the media claimed “Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change….The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years.” And lots of people changed their names (and pronouns) after decades. This is all about opposing Trump. 

AP accepted Trump changing back the name of Mount McKinley since that’s inside America.

 

 

Barack Obama didn’t scare America’s adversaries. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad brushed off Obama’s “red line” on the use of chemical weapons, and proceeded to kill more than 1,400 people with sarin gas. Obama blinked, calling off airstrikes.

Similarly, Putin was not scared by Obama, annexing Ukraine’s Crimea region as Obama stood meekly by.

Was Putin afraid of Joe Biden? C’mon man. Rhetorical question. The only thing Biden ever claimed to have beaten was Medicare.

Morning Joe devoted a segment today to fretting over Trump arranging peace talks with Russia on Ukraine without, at this stage, the participation of Ukrainian officials. 

But the show couldn’t process Zelensky’s stunning statement on yesterday’s Meet The Press: that Putin is “scared” of Trump and that as a result, Trump, who is “strong,” can push Putin into peace negotiations.

Morning Joe aired the clip of Zelensky. But not one word was subsequently devoted to it or to the stunning contrast in Putin’s attitude toward Trump compared to his predecessors. Jonathan Lemire just kept summarizing Zelensky’s speeches and arguments. 

If there was an opinion to be offered, the focus was kvetching over Trump’s handling of the peace process, daring to negotiate directly with the Russians.

For example, Katty Kay lived up to her name in saying Donald Trump’s policy is “America first, Europe last.” Columnist David Ignatius of the Washington Post complained:

“What we are seeing is the beginning of peace negotiations over the head of Ukraine . . . It’s something that I find really difficult to accept, that we would, in effect, try to orchestrate a peace agreement without our partner.”

Ignatius should consider his own statement. This is the “beginning” of peace negotiations. Ukraine would inevitably be brought into the process at an appropriate point. But for now, let Putin’s minions sit across the table facing representatives only of Trump — the man who scares Putin.

Here’s the transcript.

MSNBC
Morning Joe
2/17/25
6:04 am ET

JONATHAN LEMIRE: President Zelensky also shared details about what he said to President Trump during a phone call between the two last week. 

KRISTEN WELKER: Is it true that you told President Trump during that phone call that Putin is only pretending to want peace because he is afraid of Mr. Trump? 

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY: Yes. Yes, I said that he’s a liar. And he said, I think that my feeling, he said, that he’s ready for peace negotiations. And I said to him, no, he’s a liar. He doesn’t want any peace. 

But, I think he’s really a little bit scared about President Trump. And I think the president has this chance, and he’s strong. And I think that really he can push Putin to peace negotiations. Yes, I think so. I think so he can. But don’t trust him. Don’t trust Putin. 

It is not coincidental that mere days after Vice President JD Vance went into the Munich Security Conference and denounced European censorship regimes, CBS’s 60 Minutes would air a report extolling the virtues of German censorship. The report filed by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi makes sure to highlight prosecutors who go after memeposters as defenders of civility.

The report opens with Alfonsi laying its predicate- censorship as protective of “civility” and “discourse”, and with the airing of a predawn cartoon deemed to be racist (click “expand” to view full transcript): 

I absolutely DO NOT question the timing of this CBS report on German censorship, just days after @JDVance went to Munich and called the Euros out for their anti-speech laws. Zensur ist wunderbar! pic.twitter.com/EZDgvqVFgo
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 17, 2025

SHARYN ALFONSI: If you’ve ever dared to read the comments on a social media post, you might start to wonder if civilized discourse is just a myth. Aggressive threats, lies, and harassment have unfortunately become the norm online, where anonymity has emboldened some users to push the limits of civility. In the United States, most of what anyone says, sends, or streams online — even if it’s hate-filled or toxic — is protected by the First Amendment as free speech. But Germany is trying to bring some civility to the world wide web by policing it in a way most Americans could never imagine. In an effort, it says, to protect discourse, German authorities have started prosecuting online trolls. And as we saw, it often begins with a pre-dawn wake-up call from the police. 

It’s 6:01 on a Tuesday morning, and we were with state police as they raided this apartment in northwest Germany. Inside, six armed officers searched a suspect’s home, then seized his laptop and cellphone. Prosecutors say those electronics may have been used to commit a crime. The crime? Posting a racist cartoon online. At the exact same time, across Germany, more than 50 similar raids played out. Part of what prosecutors say is a coordinated effort to curb online hate speech in Germany. 

It bears noting that German speech laws were a thing at CBS today, what with Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan affirming that free speech led to the Holocaust. Now at 60 Minutes, there is a justification of the very censorship laws that Vance denounced in Munich. 

After some banter with German censorship prosecutors wherein they explain that someone could go to jail for posting or reposting something deemed to be false, or insulting to a politician. 

Watch as Alfonsi rapturously listens to a prosecutor’s recount of the time he got someone who posted an anti-immigration meme:

CBS’s Sharyn Alfonsi listens with awe as a German censorship prosecutor recounts going after someone who published an anti-immigration meme online pic.twitter.com/nTHd5uYgBQ
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 17, 2025

ALFONSI: How many cases are you working on at any time?

FRANK-MICHAEL LAUE: In our unit, we have about 3,500 cases per year.

ALFONSI: Nine investigators work out of this office in a converted courthouse. Laue says they get hundreds of tips a month from police, watchdog groups and victims. 

You must see a lot of crazy stuff.

LAUE: Yes, yes.

ALFONSI: The worst of the internet is wrapped in red case folders, stuffed with printouts of online slurs, threats, and hate.

LAUE: This is a criminal offense, so…

ALFONSI: What does that say?

LAUE: Kletterpark für Flüchtlinge (Climbing park for refugees).

ALFONSI: So they’re suggesting that the refugee children play in the electrical wires. Okay.

LAUE: This case, the accused had to pay, 3,750 euros…

ALFONSI: Wow.

LAUE: It’s not a parking ticket. 

ALFONSI: Yeah, not a parking ticket.

And, of course, no report on the Musk-Deranged Media would be complete without a mention of Musk’s endorsement of Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in the upcoming elections. 

No report on online censorship would be complete without @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/iKsq3umPzG
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 17, 2025

ALFONSI: The European Commission is currently investigating whether Elon Musk’s social media company X has breached the EU digital content law. Musk, who has been criticized for using X to promote Germany’s far right party ahead of next week’s elections, accused the EU of censorship and hating democracy. But in Lower Saxony, prosecutors argue they are protecting democracy and discourse by introducing a touch of German order to the unruly world wide web.

You’re doing all this work. You’re launching all these investigations. You’re fining people, sometimes putting them in jail. Does it make a difference if it’s a worldwide web and there’s a lotta hate out there?

FINK: I would say yes, because what’s the option? The option is to say, “We don’t do anything?” No. We are prosecutors. If we see a crime, we want– to investigate it. It’s a lot of work and there are also borders. It’s not an area without law.

It’s not censorship, you see, but “…German order to the unruly world wide web.” 

All things equal, I think we’ll pass on this particular style of order. Continue to watch these spaces as DOGE continues to tear through the funding base for the government censorship complex. The left will continue to howl like stuck pigs, and the media will continue to push reports like these, advocating for censorship and suppression of dissent under the guises of “restoring civility” or “protecting democracy.”

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, February 16th, 2025:

SHARYN ALFONSI: If you’ve ever dared to read the comments on a social media post, you might start to wonder if civilized discourse is just a myth. Aggressive threats, lies, and harassment have unfortunately become the norm online, where anonymity has emboldened some users to push the limits of civility. In the United States, most of what anyone says, sends, or streams online — even if it’s hate-filled or toxic — is protected by the First Amendment as free speech. But Germany is trying to bring some civility to the world wide web by policing it in a way most Americans could never imagine. In an effort, it says, to protect discourse, German authorities have started prosecuting online trolls. And as we saw, it often begins with a pre-dawn wake-up call from the police. 

It’s 6:01 on a Tuesday morning, and we were with state police as they raided this apartment in northwest Germany. Inside, six armed officers searched a suspect’s home, then seized his laptop and cellphone. Prosecutors say those electronics may have been used to commit a crime. The crime? Posting a racist cartoon online. At the exact same time, across Germany, more than 50 similar raids played out. Part of what prosecutors say is a coordinated effort to curb online hate speech in Germany. 

What’s the typical reaction when the police show up at somebody’s door and they say, “Hey, we believe you wrote this on the internet,”?

MATTHAUS FINK: They say– in Germany we say, “Das wird man ja wohl noch sagen dürfen (One should still be allowed to say that).” So we are here with crimes of talking, posting on internet, and the people are surprised that this is really illegal to post these kind of words.

ALFONSI: They don’t think it was illegal? 

FINK: No. They don’t think it was illegal. And they say, “No, that’s my free speech.” And we say, “No, you have free speech as well, but it is also has its limits.”

ALFONSI: Interpreting those limits is part of the job for Dr. Matthäus Fink, Svenja Meininghaus and Frank-Michael Laue: a few of the state prosecutors tasked with policing Germany’s robust hate speech laws, online. After its darkest chapter, Germany strengthened its speech laws. As prosecutors explain it, the German constitution protects free speech but not hate speech. And here’s where it gets tricky: German law prohibits any speech that could incite hatred or is deemed insulting.

It’s illegal to display Nazi symbolism, a Swastika or deny the Holocaust. That’s clear. Is it a crime to insult somebody in public?

SVENJA MEININGHAUS: Yes. 

FRANK-MICHAEL LAUE Yes, it is.

ALFONSI: And it’s a crime to insult them online as well?

MEININGHAUS: Yes.

FINK: The fine could be even higher if you insult someone in the internet. 

ALFONSI: Why?

FINK: Because in internet, it stays there. If we are talking face to face, you insult me, I insult you, okay. Finish. But if you’re in the internet, if I insult you or a politician.

ALFONSI: It sticks around forever.

FINK: Yeah.

ALFONSI: The prosecutors explained German law also prohibits the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats, and fake quotes.

If somebody posts something that’s not true, and then somebody else reposts it or likes it, are they committing a crime?

MEININGHAUS: Yeah, in the case of reposting it is a crime as well, because the reader can’t distinguish whether you just invented this or just reposted it. It’s the same for us.

ALFONSI: The punishment for breaking hate speech laws can include jail time for repeat offenders. But in most cases, a judge levies a stiff fine and sometimes – keeps their devices.

ALFONSI: How do people react when you take their phones from them?

LAUE: They are shocked. It’s a kind of punishment if you lose your-smartphone. It’s even worse than the fine you have to pay.

ALFONSI: Because your whole life is typically on your phone now. 

The application of Germany’s decades-old speech laws to the online world was accelerated after an assassination, fueled by the internet, sent shockwaves through the country. In 2015, a video of a local politician named Walter Lübcke went viral after he defended then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s progressive immigration policy.

MEININGHAUS: People with a very right political world view they started– hating him on the internet. They started insulting him. They started to incite people to–to kill him. And that went on for about four years.

ALFONSI: Online.

MEININGHAUS: Yes. Until in 2019, so four years after he gave that speech, he was shot in his head and instantly dead. So that was one of the cases where we see that online hate can sometimes find a way into real life and then hurt people.

ALFONSI: After a man with links to neo-Nazis was arrested, Germany ramped up the creation of its online hate task forces. There are 16 units across the country, each with a team of investigators. Frank-Michael Laue, a career criminal prosecutor, leads the Lower Saxony unit.

How many cases are you working on at any time?

LAUE: In our unit, we have about 3,500 cases per year.

ALFONSI: Nine investigators work out of this office in a converted courthouse. Laue says they get hundreds of tips a month from police, watchdog groups and victims. 

You must see a lot of crazy stuff.

LAUE: Yes, yes.

ALFONSI: The worst of the internet is wrapped in red case folders, stuffed with printouts of online slurs, threats, and hate.

LAUE: This is a criminal offense, so…

ALFONSI: What does that say?

LAUE: Kletterpark für Flüchtlinge (Climbing park for refugees).

ALFONSI: So they’re suggesting that the refugee children play in the electrical wires. Okay.

LAUE: This case, the accused had to pay, 3,750 euros…

ALFONSI: Wow.

LAUE: It’s not a parking ticket. 

ALFONSI: Yeah, not a parking ticket.

To build their cases, investigators scour social media and use public and government data. Laue says sometimes, social media companies will provide information to prosecutors, but not always. So the task force employs special software investigators to help unmask anonymous users. 

ALFONSI: So this is suggesting you kill people seeking asylum here.

Laue says his unit has successfully prosecuted about 750 hate speech cases over the last four years. But it was a 2021 case involving a local politician named Andy Grote that captured the country’s attention. Grote complained about a tweet that called him a “pimmel,” a German word for the male anatomy. That triggered a police raid and accusations of excessive censorship by the government. As prosecutors explained to us, in Germany, it’s OK to debate politics online. But it can be a crime to call anyone a “pimmel,” even a politician.

ALFONSI: So it sounds like you’re saying, “It’s okay to criticize a politician’s policy but not to say ‘I think you’re a jerk and an idiot.'”

FINK: Exactly. Comments like “You’re son of a bitch.” Excuse me for using, but these words has nothing to do with a political discussions or a contribution to a discussion.

Civility is more than a commandment. For Germans, rules are gospel. Even on a quiet street, the crosswalk signal is adhered to with the devotion of a monk. But some here worry by policing the internet, Germany is backsliding.

ALFONSI: The criticism is that you know, this feels like the surveillance that Germany conducted 80 years ago. How do you respond to that?

JOSEPHINE BALLON: There is no surveillance. 

Josephine Ballon is a CEO of HateAid, a Berlin-based human rights organization that supports victims of online violence. 

ALFONSI: In the United States a lot of people look at this and say, “This is restricting free speech. It’s a threat to democracy.” 

BALLON: Free speech needs boundaries. And in the case of Germany, these boundaries are part of our constitution. Without boundaries a very small group of people can rely on endless freedom to say anything that they want, while everyone else is scared and intimidated.

ALFONSI: And your fear is that if people are freely attacked online that they’ll withdraw from the discussion?

BALLON: This is not only a fear. It’s already taking place, already half of the internet users in Germany are afraid to express their political opinion, and they rarely participate in public debates online anymore. Half of the internet users. 

ALFONAI: Renate Künast is a prominent German politician. In 2015, this meme of the Green Party member appeared on Facebook, falsely implying that she said every German should learn Turkish. 

ALFONSI: You never said that.

RENATE KUNAST: I never said that. And this harms my reputation. Because people say—I think she’s a bit crazy. Gosh, how can she say that? 

ALFONSI: Künast, a 40-year politician, says she began receiving threats and hate-filled comments from anonymous users online. 

ALFONSIi: You’ve spent your—a life in politics. What was different about what took place online?

KUNAST: The first point was it was much more personal, “You’re looking so ugly. You are an old woman. You– we know where you live.” Or even– “You should be raped by a group of men so that you see what all these immigrants are doing.” 

ALFONSI: So this was not elevated conversation. This was very personal and very hateful.

KUNAS: It was very personal.

ALFONSI: Künast asked Meta to delete all the false quotes attributed to her worldwide.

KUNAST: And they were astonished. “What? We cannot do it,” they said. “Just by software, the software is not able to deal with all this.” And we have to get a lot of new employees. And the– I said yes, it’s my personal right. It’s my reputation.

ALFONSI: Künast sued Facebook and won. Last year in a landmark case, a German court ruled Meta had to remove all the fake quotes attributed to her. Meta is appealing. 

KUNAST: This court said, in case of public servants, which have public offices and jobs, it’s public interest that their personal rights are protected. Because otherwise no one would go for these jobs, you know? That would harm democracy. 

ALFONSI: After all this are you seeing less hateful comments now on your social media feeds?

KUNAST: Yes, there are less hateful comments. And there was one tweet which says, “Don’t say that to her, she would take you to court.”

ALFONSI You might sue them.

KUNAST I might sue them.

ALFONSI: Last year, the European Union implemented a new law that requires social media companies to stop the spread of harmful content online in Europe, or face millions of dollars in fines. But Josephine Ballon of HateAid says some social media companies are still not complying with the new law. 

BALLON: I would love social media companies to be a safer place than they are right now. But what we see is that their content moderation is not comprehensive. Sometimes it seems to be working well in some areas, but in many areas it’s just not.

ALFONSI: The European Commission is currently investigating whether Elon Musk’s social media company X has breached the EU digital content law. Musk, who has been criticized for using X to promote Germany’s far right party ahead of next week’s elections, accused the EU of censorship and hating democracy. But in Lower Saxony, prosecutors argue they are protecting democracy and discourse by introducing a touch of German order to the unruly world wide web.

You’re doing all this work. You’re launching all these investigations. You’re fining people, sometimes putting them in jail. Does it make a difference if it’s a worldwide web and there’s a lotta hate out there?

FINK: I would say yes, because what’s the option? The option is to say, “We don’t do anything?” No. We are prosecutors. If we see a crime, we want– to investigate it. It’s a lot of work and there are also borders. It’s not an area without law.

 

Since last year, CNN host Erin Burnett several times has had on a liberal and transgender former Yale classmate of Vice President JD Vance to complain about the Trump administration’s policies on transgenders and other issues. Vice President Vance’s former friend made two previous appearances with Burnett — in July and in September — and trashed Vance as a “chameleon” and “fraud,” and someone who has become “callous and divisive.”

Last year, Nelson shared a pile of old email exchanges with Vance with Burnett as well as the New York Times — anything to get Trump-Vance defeated.

On Friday’s Erin Burnett OutFront, Sofia Nelson appeared for the third time since July, this time to respond to the removal of the word “transgender” from federal government websites and Vance’s recent criticism of judicial overreach. The CNN host set up the segment:

Tonight, the courts dealing Trump a setback. A second federal judge temporarily blocking an executive order rolling back transgender rights. Trump has announced four orders so far rolling those rights back, including purging all government websites of the word “transgender.” The latest is the webpage for the Stonewall National Monument which was the birthplace of the gay rights movement where transgender activists played a crucial role. Now, shortening LGBTQ to LGB.

After recalling that, back in 2012, Vance had been supportive of Nelson going through “gender-affirming” surgery, Burnett began by posing: “What has gone through your mind as you have seen this unfold so quickly?”

Nelson complained:

It’s just been a furious pace, and the breadth of orders and the quickness of them have been shocking. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so naive, but I was hopeful that it wouldn’t be quite as bad as people are predicting. And it’s been as bad if not worse. There seems to be a very concerted effort to erase trans people from public life and from the history books.

After noting a couple of transgenders who were involved in the Stonewall uprising, the analysis continued:

And to erase that history — to rewrite history, that’s a real authoritarian move, Erin, and it’s part of this overall effort to erase trans people from public life and from history. But the truth is, we’ve always been here, and we will always be here. And they can try as hard as they would like, but we’re not going anywhere.

Burnett then cued up her liberal guest to take exception with Vice President Vance’s recent tweet asserting that the courts do not have the right to block the “legitimate” exercise of executive power, leading Nelson to suggest that Vance was denying the basic principle of judicial review set by Marbury vs. Madison even though Vance’s use of the word “legitimate” would seem to make a distinction from a President trying to take illegitimate actions not supported by the Constitution.

Transcripts follow:

CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront

February 14, 2025

7:42 p.m.

BURNETT: Tonight, the courts dealing Trump a setback. A second federal judge temporarily blocking an executive order rolling back transgender rights. Trump has announced four orders so far rolling those rights back, including purging all government websites of the word “transgender.” The latest is the webpage for the Stonewall National Monument which was the birthplace of the gay rights movement where transgender activists played a crucial role. Now, shortening LGBTQ to LGB.

“OutFront” now, Sofia Nelson, a former close friend and Yale Law School classmate of Vice President JD Vance. And Sofia familiar to so many of our viewers, but this is the first time, you know, you and I have talked since Trump and Vance won the election. And, you know, we talked prior to that about how he supported you when you had your own gender-affirming surgery back in 2012, but now here in these past few weeks we’ve seen executive order after executive order rolling back transgender rights. I mean, have you processed that? What has gone through your mind as you have seen this unfold so quickly?

NELSON: Thank you for having me, Erin, and good evening. It’s just been a furious pace, and the breadth of orders and the quickness of them have been shocking. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so naive, but I was hopeful that it wouldn’t be quite as bad as people are predicting. And it’s been as bad if not worse. There seems to be a very concerted effort to erase trans people from public life and from the history books. We know that Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are heroes of the transgender community and of the LGBT rights movement, and were at the forefront of the Stonewall uprising. And they led what became the modern day LGBT rights movement, which is memorialized at the Stonewall National Monument. And to erase that history — to rewrite history, that’s a real authoritarian move, Erin, and it’s part of this overall effort to erase trans people from public life and from history. But the truth is, we’ve always been here, and we will always be here. And they can try as hard as they would like, but we’re not going anywhere.

BURNETT: I mean, Vance has spoken about the showdown that the Trump administration has had with the courts so far. We talk about the order today, you know, being put on pause by a judge for the second time. And that’s happened on other topics as well. But Vance said, Sofia: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Now, you’re a public defender now. You went to law school with Vance. So what’s your reaction when you see him post something like that? “Judge’s aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

NELSON: So Vance — JD and I actually took constitutional law together, so we read and analyzed Marbury vs. Madison together. That is the Article III power of the judiciary — that’s what separation of powers means. Congress writes the laws, the executive enacts laws, and the judiciary gets to decide whether a law is constitutional and an executive action is constitutional. So what the courts are doing right now is exactly what they were designed to do by the Constitution and by our Founding Fathers. And that’s been the case since 1808 and the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Marbury vs. Madison. I mean, what we’re facing right now is the beginning of a constitutional crisis. And this isn’t the first time. I mean, JD’s tweet was surprising to me. He said that previously, you know, kind of admiring this Andrew Jackson, “Well, let them come — let’s see them come and enforce it” style, and it’s incredibly dangerous. It’s a thing of authoritarians ignoring the courts. It’s something authoritarians do. 

 

 

CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront

September 30, 2024

7:52 p.m. Eastern

NELSON: But, more importantly, Erin, this is just not an issue that affects everyday people. I don’t go around asking people what medication they’re on — what surgeries they’ve had because, like Tim Walz, I know how to mind my own damn business. And I don’t think that, whether I’ve had surgery or whether someone else has surgery is important to everyday Americans. This election is about freedom, it’s about privacy, and it’s about everyday economic issues, kitchen table issues. And that’s — this is just a distraction — it’s another way of dividing us. It’s another way of spewing hate and fear, and to distract from the important economic issues like which side is pro-union. Which side is going to help Americans afford their first home with down payment assistance. …

(…)

BURNETT: Who do you think the real JD Vance is?

NELSON: Yeah, could the real JD Vance please stand up? I don’t think anybody knows, right? We’ve had many different iterations of JD Vance. He’s a chameleon,  he’s a fraud, and he’s out for power and wealth. And I think that shows why he’s wildly unpopular because the American people value authenticity. And this is, I think, actually ties into the trans rights issue, Erin, because what I’m seeking and what all trans people are seeking is the right to live their authentic lives — to be their authentic selves. And that makes you happier, and it makes you less angry. And I think, you know, it might be easier for JD Vance to order donuts without looking weird if he could be his authentic self. And he might have a thing or two to learn from trans people, is all I’m saying.

(…)

CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront

July 29, 2024

7:01 p.m. Eastern

ERIN BURNETT: “OutFront” tonight, will the real JD Vance please stand up? Tonight, an exclusive interview with JD Vance’s former classmate and close friend, Sofia Nelson, someone Vance refers to lovingly as “Sofs” in some of the more than 80 emails they wrote each other that Nelson has shared with “OutFront.” Now, most of these emails have never been seen before, and they are emails in which Vance writes openly about hating Trump. He goes after Trump supporters as racists, and he even goes so far as to say he hates police. We’re going to dive into these emails along with our many questions for Sofia Nelson in just a moment.

(…)

All right, Vance’s big debut as Trump’s running mate has been off to a rocky start as people are questioning what he really believes and what he really stands for. In one of the emails that Sofia Nelson shares with us from 2014, Vance writes, quote, “I hate the police. Given the number of negative experiences I’ve had in the past few years, I can’t imagine what a black guy goes through.” Yet after being selected as Trump’s running mate, this is what Vance has to say about police.

JD VANCE, VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE (from last Saturday): They are our protectors, and we back the blue in this country.

BURNETT: And then there’s another email — this one’s from 2016 — it’s never been made public before. JD Vance writes this about Trump: Quote, “I hate him and what he represents.”

(….)

So I understand you’re a transgender public defender in Detroit — Vance now is one of the Republican party’s staunchest culture warriors. So when you look at what you’re seeing now, Sofia, JD Vance running as Trump’s Vice President, do you see any of the same person that you knew in law school?

SOFIA NELSON, EX-CLASSMATE OF VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: First of all, thanks for having me tonight, Erin. No, I don’t see any of the man that I got to know and care about. It’s really heartbreaking to see him become so callous and divisive.

Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech at a security conference in Munich touched on the many ways Europe has become more authoritarian and elitist, from annulling elections in Romania, to throwing people in jail for online wrong-think, to outlawing silent prayer vigils in Scotland. Yet the New York Times treated the speech with utter contempt, ignoring Vance’s call for freedom while painting him as a quasi-Nazi supporter.

A Sunday print story by Berlin bureau chief Jim Tankersley, “Vance, Like Musk, Attacks German Norms on Nazis and Extremism,” set Vance up for a fall. Would an Ivy League liberal receive the same condescending coverage that Ivy League conservative Vance has?

The American vice president visited a concentration camp on Thursday afternoon. He laid a wreath at the foot of a statue, made the sign of the cross and paused before a memorial wall where in multiple tongues, including German and English, the words “Never Again” were written.

JD Vance told reporters he had read about the Holocaust in books, but that its “unspeakable evil” was driven home by his trip to Dachau, where more than 30,000 people died at the hands of the Nazis. “It’s something that I’ll never forget, and I’m grateful to have been able to see it up close in person,” Mr. Vance said.

But after Mr. Vance spoke in Munich the next day, Germany’s leaders effectively questioned if he had understood what he had just seen.

Eighty years after American soldiers liberated Dachau, top German officials this weekend all-but accused Mr. Vance — and by extension, President Trump — of boosting a political party that many Germans consider to be dangerously descended from Nazism.

That party, called the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is sitting second in the polls for next Sunday’s parliamentary elections, with about 20 percent of the public saying they support it….

The reporter eventually got around to Vance’s actual words.

“I look to Brussels,” Mr. Vance said, “where E.U. Commission commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they judge to be ‘hateful content,’ or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combating misogyny.’”

The paper can’t admit Vance has a point about free speech in Germany, where cultural submission to Islamic immigration has resulted in grotesque double standards like a case from Hamburg where a German woman was given “a harsher sentence than a convicted rapist after she was found guilty of defaming him.”

The Times consistently ignores such legal atrocities, even though there’s much that needs saying regarding immigration and religious extremism. Germany has been hit by several terror attacks by immigrants of late. Bordering Austria recently suffered a deadly knife rampage in the name of ISIS.

Tankersley did note Vance and Trump adviser Elon Musk are trying to forge an international alliance over “a hard-line opposition to mass migration” and trying “to sweep away laws and social norms in Europe against speech, online or otherwise, that governments deem hateful or ‘misinformation’ but that conservatives say are meant to suppress their political opinions…”

Sunday’s separate lead story, authored by Tankersley and Kiev bureau chief Andrew Kramer, took the side of the European elite against that of America’s pro-speech vice president. “German Leader Rebukes Vance Over Far Right” focused on Vance’s indirectly expressed opinion that Germany stop suppressing AfD.

A day after Mr. Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference by telling German leaders to drop their so-called firewall and allow the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to enter their federal government, Mr. Scholz accused Mr. Vance of effectively violating a commitment to never again allow Germany to be led by fascists who could repeat the horrors of the Holocaust.

And yet the main anti-Semitism on the ground in Europe today is coming from the pro-Hamas left.

The paper managed to avoid entirely the awkward topic of Vance’s criticism of the annulment of the Romanian election, in which the country’s top court scuttled last December’s presidential election after the first round of voting was won by a pro-Russian candidate who ran on a promise to stop support for Ukraine. Elections are only legitimate if the results are pleasing.

CBS’s Margaret Brennan continues on a tour-de-force of galaxy brained takes that ultimately cause her to get smacked down by her conservative interlocutor. The latest such instance involves her assertion that the Holocaust was caused by (weaponized) free speech, which was promptly and thoroughly rebuffed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Watch the remarkable exchange, which closed out their interview (click “expand” to view transcript):

MARCO RUBIO: 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.

RUBIO: Well, I have to disagree with you. No, I have – I 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. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history. I also think it’s wrong – again, I go back to the point of his speech. The point of his speech was basically that there is an erosion in free speech and intolerance for opposing points of view within Europe, and that’s of concern, because that is eroding. That’s not an erosion of your military capabilities. That’s not an erosion of your economic standing. That’s an erosion of the actual values that bind us together in this transatlantic union that everybody talks about. And I think allies and friends and partners that have worked together now for 80 years should be able to speak frankly to one another in open forums without being offended, insulted, or upset. And I spoke to Foreign Ministers from multiple countries throughout Europe. Many of them probably didn’t like the speech or didn’t agree with it, but they were continuing to engage with us on all sorts of issues that unite us. So, again, at the end of the day, I think that, you know, people give all – – that is a forum in which you’re supposed to be inviting people to give speeches, not basically a chorus where everyone is saying the exact same thing. That’s not always going to be the case when it’s a collection of democracies where leaders have the right and the privilege to speak their minds in forums such as these.

We could’ve just as easily titled this blog “JD Vance is still in Margaret Brennan’s Head”, because the exchange in question was in reaction to the Vice President’s remarks before the Munich Security Conference, wherein he forgoes the usual transatlantic platitudes and tells Europe in no uncertain terms to get their act together on free speech and censorship. That Brennan found it so triggering tells you a lot about the state of the media and the current global order, the preservation of which increasingly relies on the censorship of its citizens. 

Two things stick out about Brennan’s hot take: the first, that Nazi Germany didn’t weaponize free speech but suppressed it. This tracks with the former regime’s fixation on “misinformation”, and desire to control social media. It is with this lens that Brennan seeks to superimpose the past upon today’s events.

Second, that Brennan vcoughed up that hot take even after hearing Rubio go through an initial defense of free speech in response to her question on Vance’s remarks. The full exchange in its context makes Brennan worse:

The full Brennan-Rubio exchange on the @JDVance at the Munich Security Conference is worse than the “censorship” clip because she first tries to smear AfD with “investigated by German intelligence”, as if that would cow anyone into compliance after the last 4 years pic.twitter.com/s43p92HhhU
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 16, 2025

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?

MARCO 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 – 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.

BRENNAN: Right.

RUBIO: 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. We are – 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. People are allowed – you know, you don’t have to agree on someone’s speech. I happen to agree with a lot of what he said, but you don’t have to agree with someone’s speech to – to at least appreciate the fact they have a right to say it and that you should listen to it and see whether those criticisms are valid.

BRENNAN: Yes.

RUBIO: 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.

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.

RUBIO: Well, I have to disagree with you. No, I have – I 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. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history. I also think it’s wrong – again, I go back to the point of his speech. The point of his speech was basically that there is an erosion in free speech and intolerance for opposing points of view within Europe, and that’s of concern, because that is eroding. That’s not an erosion of your military capabilities. That’s not an erosion of your economic standing. That’s an erosion of the actual values that bind us together in this transatlantic union that everybody talks about. And I think allies and friends and partners that have worked together now for 80 years should be able to speak frankly to one another in open forums without being offended, insulted, or upset. And I spoke to Foreign Ministers from multiple countries throughout Europe. Many of them probably didn’t like the speech or didn’t agree with it, but they were continuing to engage with us on all sorts of issues that unite us. So, again, at the end of the day, I think that, you know, people give all – – that is a forum in which you’re supposed to be inviting people to give speeches, not basically a chorus where everyone is saying the exact same thing. That’s not always going to be the case when it’s a collection of democracies where leaders have the right and the privilege to speak their minds in forums such as these.

BRENNAN: Mr. Secretary, I’m told that we are out of time. A lot to get through with you. We appreciate you making time today.

RUBIO: Yes.

BRENNAN: We’ll be back in a minute.

Such historically inaccurate views, especially paired with contempt for actual freedom of speech, are quite commonplace in our politics. What is uncommon is for a supposedly reputable media outlet to have a person with such views as its chief political correspondent.

Much of the focus of coverage of CBS’s woes is on its new and already beleaguered Evening News, but one can’t imagine Brennan evading internal scrutiny much longer.

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned interview as aired on CBS Face the Nation on Sunday, February 16th, 2025:

CBS FACE THE NATION

2/16/25

10:31 AM

MARGARET BRENNAN: Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation.

We want to begin today with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is in Jerusalem on the second leg of his trip through Europe and the Middle East. 

Mr. Secretary, I know it’s the evening hours there, and you’ve had a long day. We appreciate your time. You’ve got quite a busy schedule. You met earlier with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He said he’s lockstep with the Trump administration, but he can’t share details on – quote – “when the Gates of Hell will be open if all our hostages are not released.” Did he tell you he wants to keep talks going to get to Phase Two of this hostage deal?

MARCO RUBIO: Well, I think we share a common goal. We want to see every hostage released. Frankly, I think – and the president has said this – we want to see them out as soon as we possibly can. And – and, certainly, you know, the world has watched these images of people – and it’s just heartbreaking to remember that some of them have been now almost two years there. It’s a horrifying situation. So we coordinate and work very close with them. We share the goal that every hostage needs to come home, every single one, without delay. Obviously, the – there are details of how we’re pursuing that and coordinating that we’re not going to share publicly because we don’t want to endanger the hostages and we don’t want to endanger this process. But suffice it to say that, if it was up to us, every one of these hostages would be home right now, and we want it to happen as soon as possible.

BRENNAN: OK. So, the deal stands?

RUBIO: Again, we want every hostage out as soon as possible.

BRENNAN: OK.

RUBIO: We will – and we want to see them home. There are some that are supposed to – under the deal, there are some that are supposed to be released coming up next weekend. We expect that to happen, but we’d like to see them all come out. We’re not going to – we’re not in favor of waiting weeks and weeks. Now, that may be the process that’s in place because of the deal, but we would like to see them all out as soon as possible, and we continue to coordinate. And that – that’s what we’d like to see as the outcome.

BRENNAN: Yes.

RUBIO: Who wouldn’t want all these hostages to be home and with their families?

BRENNAN: Understood. Want to ask you about Iran as well. President Trump has said he wants a diplomatic deal with Iran. Are you reaching out to them? And alongside that, does the U.S. support a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran to take out its nuclear program?

RUBIO: Well, first of all, Israel will always have to act in what they believe is their national interest and their national defense. And so I’m not going to speak about whatever strategies they may have on this or any other topic. I will say that we don’t have any outreach from Iran. We haven’t seen any. And, ultimately, we’ve seen in the past that efforts that Iran has undertaken diplomatically have been only about how to extend the time frame that – but continue to enrich and re – and – and in addition to sponsor terrorism, in addition to build these long-range weapons, in addition to sow instability throughout the region. But let’s be clear. There’s been zero outreach or interest to date from Iran about any negotiated deal. Ideally, yes, I would love to wake up one day and hear the news that Iran has decided not to pursue a nuclear weapon, not to sponsor terrorism, and reengage in the world as a – as a – as a normal government. We’ve had no indication of any of that, not just now, but for 30 years.

BRENNAN: So you head from Israel to Saudi Arabia next. I know you’ll be talking about Gaza, but we’ve also learned that Saudi Arabia is trying to facilitate this diplomacy with Russia about Ukraine. Which Russian officials do you expect to be meeting with? And what will the focus of your talks there be? Do you actually believe Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate and make concessions?

RUBIO: Well, here’s what I know. I know President Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin last week. And, in it, Vladimir Putin expressed his interest in peace, and the president expressed his desire to see an end to this conflict in a way that was enduring and that protected Ukrainian sovereignty, and that was an enduring peace, not that we’re going to have another invasion in three or four years. That’s a good call. Now, obviously, it has to be followed up by action. So, the next few weeks and days will determine whether it’s serious or not. Ultimately, one phone call does not make peace. One phone call does not solve a war as complex as this one. But I can tell you that Donald Trump is the only leader in the world that could potentially begin that process. Other leaders have tried. They have not been able to do so. When he ran in his campaign and he was elected as president, one of his promises was, he would work to bring an end to this conflict in a way that’s sustainable and fair.

And, obviously, you know, this is the first step in that process, but we have a long ways to go. Again, one call doesn’t make it. One meeting wouldn’t make it. This – there’s a lot of work to be done. But I – I thought it has – you know, even the longest journey begins with the first step. So we’ll see what happens from here, hopefully good things.

BRENNAN: Who will you be meeting with?

RUBIO: Well, nothing’s been finalized yet. I was scheduled to be in Saudi Arabia anyways. We invited – we announced that trip a week ago, and – a week-and-a-half ago. So, ultimately, look, if at any point in time there’s an opportunity to continue the work that President Trump started last week to begin to create an opening for a broader conversation, that it would involve Ukraine and would involve the end of the war, and would involve our allies all over the world, particularly in Europe, we’re going to explore it, if that opportunity presents itself. I don’t have any details for you this morning, other than to say that we stand ready to follow the president’s lead on this and begin to explore ways, if those opportunities present itself, to begin a process towards peace. Now, a process towards peace is not a one-meeting thing. This war has been going on for a while.

BRENNAN: Right.

RUBIO: It’s difficult. It’s complicated. It’s been bloody. It’s been costly. So it will not be easy to end the conflict in this. And there are other parties at stake that have opinions on this as well. The European Union has sanctions as well. The Ukrainians are obviously fighting this war. It’s their country, and they’re on the front lines. So, one meeting isn’t going to solve it. But I want to reiterate, the president made clear he wants to end this war. And if opportunities present themselves to further that, we’re going to take them if they present themselves. We’ll see what happens over the next few days.

BRENNAN: But, to be clear, Keith Kellogg, who is the envoy appointed to help with these talks, says these are going to be parallel negotiations, meaning the Ukrainians and Russians aren’t talking to each other yet. When you meet with your Russian counterpart, whoever that is, are you going to be sitting there arguing Ukraine’s position?

RUBIO: Well, first of all, I think that we have to understand is, right now, there is no process.

BRENNAN: Right.

RUBIO: What – what we have right now is a call between Putin and President Trump in which both sides expressed an interest in ending this conflict. I imagine there will be follow-up conversations to figure out what a process to talk about that would look like. And then, at that point, perhaps we can begin to share more details. So it’s a bit premature. I know there’s been a lot of reaction to it, because there’s been no conversation about it, any serious conversation. But I want to go back to the point I made. President Trump ran. He was very clear. He thinks this war needs to end. And if he sees an opportunity to end it, which is what he’s looking for, whether there is an opportunity or not, we’re going to pursue it. Ultimately, it will reach a point when you are – if it’s real negotiations, and we’re not there yet, but if that were to happen, Ukraine will have to be involved, because they’re the one that were invaded, and the Europeans will have to be involved because they’re the – they have sanctions on Putin and Russia as well, and – and they’ve contributed to this effort.

Yes.

RUBIO: We’re just not there yet. We really aren’t, but hopefully we will be, because we’d all like to see this war end.

BRENNAN: No doubt. The last administration did have contact through the intelligence agencies with Russia, but they didn’t believe there was any proof that Vladimir Putin was interested in talks. You know the history with Vladimir Putin. He likes to use diplomacy as a cover to distract while he continues to wage war. Do you trust that this time is different?

RUBIO: Yeah, I don’t think, in geopolitics, anyone should trust anyone. I think these things have to be verified through actions. I said yesterday that peace is not a noun. It’s a verb. It’s an action. You have to take concrete steps towards it. What I can tell you is, I know of no better negotiator in American politics than President Trump.

BRENNAN: Yeah.

RUBIO: I don’t – I think President Trump will know very quickly whether to say, is this a real thing or whether this is an effort to buy time. But I don’t want to prejudge that. I don’t want to foreclose the opportunity to end a conflict that’s already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and continues every single day to be increasingly a war of attrition on both sides. I think everyone should be celebrating the fact that we have an American president that is seeking to promote peace in the world, not start wars, but end them, in a way that’s enduring.

BRENNAN: Right.

RUBIO: That’s something we should be happy about. Whether it’s possible or not, we’re certainly willing, but it’s not entirely up to us, obviously, but we’ll find out.

BRENNAN: Well, you did speak in a phone call with Russia’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov. The Russian side claimed that you discussed restoring trade, which seemed to be a nod to sanctions, easing restrictions on diplomats, and other gestures like a high-level leaders meeting. Are you actually considering, is the Trump administration considering lifting sanctions on Russia?

RUBIO: Well, the phone call was to establish communications that are consistent with the call the president made last week with Vladimir Putin, because if we are – if there is going to be the possibility of – of progress here towards peace, we are going to need to talk to the Russians. I mean, that is going to have to happen, and we’re going to have to be able to be able to do it across our channels.

BRENNAN: About lifting sanctions, though?

RUBIO: I also raised in that conversation concerns that – well, we didn’t go into any details. I mean, what we just discussed is basically the ability to begin communicating. I had never spoken to Mr. Lavrov in my life, so it was an opportunity for us to begin to open that channel of communication, which, again, if there’s the potential for peace here, that’s a channel that has to exist. But let me add one more thing. I also raised the issue of our embassy in Moscow, which operates under very difficult conditions. I raised that because it’s important. It’s going to be very difficult to engage in communication with Russia about anything if our embassy is not functioning. And he raised concerns about his diplomatic mission in the United States. So, at a very basic level, if, in fact, there is going to be an opportunity here to pursue peace by engaging with the Russians, we’re going to need to have functional embassies in Moscow and in Washington, D.C., and that’s certainly something foreign ministers would talk about as a matter of normal course.

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?

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 – 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.

BRENNAN: Right.

RUBIO: 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. We are – 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. People are allowed – you know, you don’t have to agree on someone’s speech. I happen to agree with a lot of what he said, but you don’t have to agree with someone’s speech to – to at least appreciate the fact they have a right to say it and that you should listen to it and see whether those criticisms are valid.

BRENNAN: Yes.

RUBIO: 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.

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.

RUBIO: Well, I have to disagree with you. No, I have – I 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. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history. I also think it’s wrong – again, I go back to the point of his speech. The point of his speech was basically that there is an erosion in free speech and intolerance for opposing points of view within Europe, and that’s of concern, because that is eroding. That’s not an erosion of your military capabilities. That’s not an erosion of your economic standing. That’s an erosion of the actual values that bind us together in this transatlantic union that everybody talks about. And I think allies and friends and partners that have worked together now for 80 years should be able to speak frankly to one another in open forums without being offended, insulted, or upset. And I spoke to Foreign Ministers from multiple countries throughout Europe. Many of them probably didn’t like the speech or didn’t agree with it, but they were continuing to engage with us on all sorts of issues that unite us. So, again, at the end of the day, I think that, you know, people give all – – that is a forum in which you’re supposed to be inviting people to give speeches, not basically a chorus where everyone is saying the exact same thing. That’s not always going to be the case when it’s a collection of democracies where leaders have the right and the privilege to speak their minds in forums such as these.

BRENNAN: Mr. Secretary, I’m told that we are out of time. A lot to get through with you. We appreciate you making time today.

RUBIO: Yes.

BRENNAN: We’ll be back in a minute.

 

After an extended silence, CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins has finally responded to accusations of providing material support to the shooter of UnitedHealthCEO Brian Thompson. In an X post, Collins denies the main charge of sharing a fundraising link for the shooter, defending her sharing of a support website due to its being “newsworthy.”

Collins drew broad backlash after her Friday post on X: “Luigi Mangione’s legal defense team has launched a new website today”, along with a link to the website. 

Collins didn’t delete the post until after the backlash. Per The New York Post:

CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins apparently deleted a social media post after receiving backlash for appearing to promote a defense fund for Luigi Mangione, the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer.

In the post on X, Collins showed a link to a new website launched by defense lawyers for Mangione, who faces charges of first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, stalking and other state and federal charges in New York and Pennsylvania for allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024.

Among those who weighed in and condemned the now-deleted post, Larry O’Connor:

ICYMI: @cnn host and White House correspondent @kaitlancollins used her considerable platform to promote a link for the defense fund of a cold-blooded killer.
She has not yet apologized nor has she posted anything else in 24 hours. pic.twitter.com/67FdCAU2GE
— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) February 16, 2025
As Stephen Miller notes, the shooter’s counsel is (or was at some point) a CNN legal contributor:

Kaitlan Collins omits the fact that Mangione’s defense attorney, the same one behind this website she is promoting, is a CNN contributor. https://t.co/6bsfXXFIb0 pic.twitter.com/HiBYGhJr23
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 15, 2025
Ace of Spades succinctly summed it up:

This is @CNN — pimping the GoFundMe for a leftwing assassin. https://t.co/dXF8emKnQg
— The Reaping Phase (@AceofSpadesHQ) February 15, 2025
Collins remained silent until it was time to react to Post item, at which point she posted:

“This is not true. I posted that his attorneys created a website, which is newsworthy and other outlets have also reported on. In no way did I share a fundraising link for him.”

That last sentence is probably what the fact-checking clique will hold on to for dear life as they try to spin away the fact that Collins lent (before unlending) her considerable platform towards promoting the CEO shooter. This is all too cute by half, given that the “newsworthy” website has its fundraising link at the very top. If you take Collins’ words at face value that she didn’t literally share the fundraising link, then you must concede that she Trojan Horsed it in by sharing the support website under cover of “newsworthiness”. 

At a bare minimum, Collins is guilty of poor judgment by not reviewing website content before blasting it to her million-plus followers. At worst, she is willfully playing along with a corporate strategy of hyping the shooter to viewers, as evident by the upcoming airing of a shooter special feature on a Warner Brothers Discovery sister network. 

In any case, it will be entirely appropriate for The White House to review whether to continue to credential someone who, whether directly or not, shared a fundraising link in material support of an accused domestic terrorist. And before our friends on the left catapult themselves into high dudgeon over this assessment, consider that we’d still be scraping graphite off the roof had a Fox News White House correspondent shared a similar website in material support of a J6 or FACE Act defendant. 

The most unserious “news” theme is insisting the Justice Department has been independent and impartial under recent Democrat presidents, especially Joe Biden’s. After four years of Biden’s DOJ pursuing January 6 defendants and appointing a special counsel to put Trump in jail, the newfangled CBS Evening News on Friday began with a “Schoolhouse Rock”-style lecture about impartiality.

That’s right. CBS claimed to favor impartiality. 

JOHN DICKERSON: If you check the Justice Department`s Web site, as we did today, you will find at the top of the mission statement the words “to uphold the rule of law.”

MAURICE DUBOIS: I’m Maurice DuBois. And on that same Web site, under the heading “Our Values,” you will see “independence and impartiality.”

DICKERSON: But after yet another federal prosecutor resigned in protest today, is the department, under the influence of President Trump, living up to its mission or its values?

DUBOIS: Seven U.S. prosecutors have now quit, rather than follow orders from Trump allies in the department to drop criminal charges against New York City’s Mayor, Eric Adams.

DICKERSON: But the implications of this go far beyond the Adams case. They go to the integrity of the justice system throughout the country.

 

Then the CBS duo turned to reporter Scott MacFarlane, which underlined the silliness of their point. Perhaps no reporter was as hopelessly devoted to Team Biden’s partisan prosecutions than MacFarlane, who made January 6 into 9/11 in his reporting. Well, except CBS was far more critical of the government response to 9/11 than to January 6. It depends on whether the president is a (D). 

SCOTT MacFARLANE: A day of absolute turmoil inside the Department of Justice amid these concerns about efforts to dismiss the case against Mayor Adams, who pleaded not guilty to trading official government actions for gifts and travel. But the concerns are spreading into concerns that prosecutors in communities big and small could be on a short leash and under the president’s thumb.

(voice-over): The aftershocks of the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams might be more powerful than the initial earthquake itself.

This is a CBS story, so the heroes were going to be the anti-Trump crusaders. 

MacFARLANE: One after another, those prosecutors have quit in protest, including an assistant U.S. attorney in New York who not only refused to drop the charges against Adams, but in a letter announcing his resignation said: “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion, but it was never going to be me.”

Tom Dupree served in George W. Bush’s Department of Justice. What do you make of this back-and-forth, this mass resignation wave?

TOM DUPREE: Well, it’s reminiscent of the Nixon era, where you saw the president basically try to find someone who would carry out his orders in the Justice Department and had to go through several officials before he finally was able to find someone who would carry it out.

Dupree is a Bush Republican, or in the first Trump term, his donation record displayed sort of a Liz Cheney/Larry Hogan Republican. Under Biden, CBS used Dupree to posit that Hunter Biden was somehow a lovable Charlie Brown, and the DOJ was Lucy pulling away his football. How does whatever favors Adams took from the Turks compare to the millions the Biden family was taking from Russia, Ukraine, China, and the rest? CBS is DNC-TV, so none of those questions will be allowed to surface. 

CBS made no attempt to explain that the local Democrat extremists want to defeat Mayor Adams in a primary because he’s too “rule of law” on the flood of illegal immigrants into New York — which is synonymous with “too pro-Trump.” Biden’s Justice Department can just as easily be painted as prosecuting Adams for embarrassing their indolence on the border.