After Melting Down over Vance, Sunday Shows OMIT Rubio's Munich Speech

Jorge Bonilla
February 15th, 2026 4:45 PM

Text to Speech

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered an address before the Munich Security Conference that was warmly received and met with rapturous applause. And if you were waiting for the Elitist Media’s Sunday shows’ analyses, you might think the speech never happened at all. 

The sole mention of Rubio’s speech was on CBS’s Face the Nation, where substitute host Ed O’Keefe referenced the speech in passing before throwing to an interview with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) recorded before the speech was delivered:

ED O’KEEFE: Secretary of State Marco Rubio left the annual Munich Security Conference after offering some reassurance to European allies wary of the Trump administration’s posture on NATO, but remained firm on the administration’s ambitions to reshape the transatlantic alliance. 

That’s it. Nothing on CNN’s State of the Union or ABC’s This Week (NBC’s Meet the Press remains in Olympics hiatus). Both of those other shows were focused 100% on domestic matters as Rubio reemphasized the Trump administration’s European policy. Per Fox News:

Standing in Germany, whose Cold War fault line once symbolized the division of a continent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered President Donald Trump’s red line for Europe.

"We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline," Rubio said during his Friday remarks before the Munich Security Conference.

America's top diplomat called for tighter borders, revived industry and a reassertion of national sovereignty, arguing that the West’s drift was not inevitable but the result of policy choices the Trump administration now intends to reverse.

This lack of coverage marks a stark contrast from how the networks covered Vice President JD Vance’s remarks the year prior, which were similar in substance if not tone. CBS’s Margaret Brennan had a full meltdown and tried to attribute the rise of Nazism to free speech. And it was Secretary Rubio who took her to school:

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.

The media had quite a bit to say back then, but not so much today. If Vance’s and Rubio’s speeches are similar, why did one draw a full meltdown but not the other? Consider this one alternative explanation: Hiding Rubio’s speech provides cover for also hiding the fact that two prominent Democrats completely embarrassed themselves under the Munich spotlight, a benefit that would certainly not be extended to an individual with an R after their name. 

Watch as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets caught flat-footed on Taiwan...

 ...only to be followed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer whiffing on Ukraine and then DEFERRING TO AOC:

These would won on a constant loop on cable TV had the shoe been on the other partisan foot. Double standards, indeed.

 

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