HOW MUCH EVIDENCE DO YOU REQUIRE?

The beat goes on.  "The Sunday 'public affairs' shows are pro wrestling for nerds."  Think of Margaret Brennan as a heel.  "Last Sunday, I had the car radio tuned to 'Face the Nation,' which began with a notorious segment involving deputy moderator Margaret Brennan and Wyoming Member of Congress Liz Cheney."  That episode aired in July 2019, before the former Member of Congress broke with Donald Trump, got primaried, and endorsed Kamala Harris, all of which might have wrecked her ratings potential for the Sunday shows.

It occurs to me, though, that maybe the baiting of Republican guests, and the continued presence of Republican guests who know they are going to be treated badly by Democrat process-worshippers is for show.  Democrats might be Excessively Earnest People who know how to talk in acronyms.  That's no fun.  So, to build ratings, Republicans consent to go on, in order to fire up their base by talking about how badly the Drive-Bys behave.  Democrat moderators behave badly because to do otherwise would make the show as soporific as a Unitarian sermon, or anything on public radio on any morning.

And so it might have gone last Sunday, where Margaret "The Heel" Brennan goaded the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

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.

Yes, there's a clip at the link, as well as a transcript.  And yes, it's possible to treat the Sunday shows, and the CBS News enterprise, as Something Serious, as Reason's Robby Soave does.

The weekend programming over at CBS was unusually focused on speech norms and censorship in Germany. First, Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan casually asserted that free speech is what empowered the Nazis to take over the government and implement the Holocaust; then, 60 Minutes conducted an interview with present-day German authorities in which they detailed their efforts to suppress not just Nazi speech but also misinformation, gossip, and insults toward politicians.

It was an alarming degree of contempt for cherished free speech principles, to say the least. News organizations are free to evince a preference for Europe's pro-censorship policies, but the criticism they attract from the right—from Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in this case—was quite deserved.

Moreover, CBS had its facts wrong. Brennan's claim that "free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide" in Nazi Germany is a profound misreading of history.

He concludes with an observation more in keeping with our wrestling theme.

This is a textbook example of why Americans are rightly proud of our robust First Amendment traditions, which stand in the way of such nonsense. Never forget that the European bureaucrats who assert the importance of censoring Nazi speech are the same people who want to arrest their citizens for saying a politician is a dick.

Decide for yourself, dear reader, whether Margaret Brennan is a heel, or as Chicago Boyz contributor Mike puts it, an idiot.

I think we are being a bit unfair about Ms. Brennan and her comment because 1) she’s an idiot, and natural law dictates that no one should be held accountable for actions that they have no control over, and 2) I think her point is far worse than her historical illiteracy implies.

In case you are wondering, yes, this is the same Brennan who got memed by JD Vance a few weeks ago. I’m sensing a pattern here.

I think her point isn’t necessarily that the Nazis exploited free speech once they gained power, but rather that they used free speech to gain power. As I said, this interpretation is far worse.

For years we’ve been treated in this country to the whole Orange Man Hitler meme, that normalizing Trump as a legitimate part of the political system is a threat to democracy. We also have been hearing laments from Brennan’s colleagues in the media and the Left (but I repeat myself) that the right to free speech is not absolute, with the implication that Trump and his band were not to be allowed the same access to American rights and the democratic system as are others.

The content and the framing of the Sunday shows might be influenced by the logic of the Critique of Pure Tolerance.  It's simpler to think of it as pro wrestling for weaklings.