CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan has been accused of being part of a bid by the network to censor free speech when it suits them.

Wall Street Journal Editorial Features Editor James Taranto made the claim in a piece penned for the paper Tuesday, in response to Brennan’s sparring match with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday’s Face the Nation  about free speech. .

Brennan had been quizzing Rubio about JD Vance’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference. That saw the vice president denounce European censorship practices that have seen some internet users jailed for reposting false information.

Taranto had some strong words about the blow-up that ensued, where Rubio argued the US’s free speech was being eroded and Brennan suggested that free speech had fueled Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust slaughter. 

‘I thought until this weekend that it was impossible to oppose free speech consistently,’ wrote Taranto, in response. ‘But CBS News may pull it off.’

‘Ms. Brennan would have benefited from a fact-checker,’ said Taranto, after Brennan argued that Vance had been making his case ‘in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.’

She was referring to Germany in the years leading up to World War Two.  

Taranto pointed out how pre-Hitler Germany had laws limiting speech as well – and how their application failed disastrously.

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CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan has been accused of attempting to censor free speech after her widely seen sparring match with Marco Rubio on the subject this past Sunday on Face the Nation

Wall Street Journal Editorial Features Editor James Taranto made the claim in a piece penned for the paper Tuesday. He joined the newspaper's editorial board in 2007

Wall Street Journal Editorial Features Editor James Taranto made the claim in a piece penned for the paper Tuesday. He joined the newspaper’s editorial board in 2007

‘On its own, Ms. Brennan’s comment reflects ordinary inconsistency – she wants to censor speech she finds disagreeable or dangerous,’ Taranto wrote in response, reminding readers how free expression afterwards became a distant memory.

Taranto then tore into CBS, bringing up how the network is reportedly looking to settle a suit filed by Trump. 

The suit alleges that CBS misled viewers by editing a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris to replace her lengthy, rambling answers with ones that were ‘completely different, coherent, and decisive’.

Taranto pointed out how First Amendment protects political speech whether or not it is coherent, as long as it is not defamatory.

The Harris interview, he said, isn’t. 

Brennan’s interview, he added, showed the network engaging in a double-standard amid her apparent desire to ban speech she disagrees with, while her bosses slam Trump for trying to silence them. 

The veteran opinion writer wrote that Trump would surely lose the suit in the absence of the settlement – before quoting a Journal report that billed the prospective olive branch ‘as a way to alleviate tensions with the Trump administration.’

If Paramount settles, he wrote, CBS will be a ‘consistent opponent of free expression.’

He then proceeded to point to a 60 Minutes segment that aired Sunday, which talked up efforts from German police officers that coincided with ones Vance aired disapproval toward last week.

Brennan had been quizzing Rubio about JD Vance's remarks at the Munich Security Conference, after the vice president denounced European censorship practices that have seen some internet users jailed for reposting false information

Brennan had been quizzing Rubio about JD Vance’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference, after the vice president denounced European censorship practices that have seen some internet users jailed for reposting false information

The boss of the paper's op-ed pages had some strong words about the blow-up that ensued, where Rubio argued that free speech and democratic institutions were being eroded in the US - leading Brennan to link free speech to the Holocaust

The boss of the paper’s op-ed pages had some strong words about the blow-up that ensued, where Rubio argued that free speech and democratic institutions were being eroded in the US – leading Brennan to link free speech to the Holocaust 

'I thought until this weekend that it was impossible to oppose free speech consistently,' wrote Taranto, in response. 'But CBS News may pull it off'. He proceeded to draw lines between the state of media and the situation in Germany a century ago, after Brennan defended the raids

‘I thought until this weekend that it was impossible to oppose free speech consistently,’ wrote Taranto, in response. ‘But CBS News may pull it off’. He proceeded to draw lines between the state of media and the situation in Germany a century ago, after Brennan defended the raids

The report praised cops for ‘introducing a touch of German order to the unruly World Wide Web’ with predawn raids on internet ‘trolls’ – who can be targeted for simply posting insults or doctored quotes online.

In his speech on Friday, Vance accused European politicians of forcing people to shut down social media accounts and echoing communist language by acting against ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation.’ 

Brennan used that to link free speech to the Holocaust, leading Rubio to accuse the anchor of engaging in the spread of misinformation herself.

‘The context of that was changing the tone of it,’ she said of Vance’s speech. ‘And you know that.’

Rubio went on to defend Vance, who later took to X to write about ‘crazy exchange.’

‘Does the media really think the Holocaust was caused by free speech?’ he asked incredulously, saying he would have to ‘disagree’.

‘Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide,’ he argued further, saying the ‘genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that also happened to be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities.’

Brennan notably clashed with Vance on the set of 60 Minutes last month. On Friday, he argued that free speech and democratic institutions were being eroded in the US before pointing to censorship in Europe, spurring Brennan's comments

Brennan notably clashed with Vance on the set of 60 Minutes last month. On Friday, he argued that free speech and democratic institutions were being eroded in the US before pointing to censorship in Europe, spurring Brennan’s comments

‘There was no free speech in Nazi Germany, there was none,’ he rightly argued, as Taranto pointed out before drawing lines between the state of the mainstream media and the situation before WWII.

‘There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany, they were [the] sole and only party to govern that country.

‘So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.’

Brennan notably clashed with Vance on the set of 60 Minutes last month, leading her to become a lightning rod of several conservatives unhappy with the current media landscape. 

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