Things got entertaining in the spring of 2025 when Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared on Margaret Brennan’s “Face the Nation” program on CBS News and schooled her on why deporting anti-American radicals is a good thing, leaving her sputtering out a flurry of one-word comments as he took her whole worldview to task.
As background, the whole exchange was provoked by the Department of State yanking away the visa of a foreign student at Columbia University who was involved in radical protests and in support of terror groups like Hamas. As Rubio noted, that is unacceptable, as we should not allow such people into our country.
He said, arguing as much after Brennan pressed him on the deportation, “This specific individual was the spokesperson, was the negotiator – negotiating on behalf of people that took over a campus, that vandalized buildings. Negotiating over what? That’s a crime in and of itself that they’re involved in being the negotiator or the spokesperson, this, that, the other.”
Continuing, he snapped, “We don’t want – we don’t need these people in our country. We never should have allowed them in in in the first place. If he had told us, I’m going over there and I’m going over there to become the spokesperson and one of the leaders of a movement that’s going to turn one of your allegedly elite colleges upside down, people can’t even go to school, the library – buildings being vandalized, we never would have let him in. We never would have let him in to begin with.”
He further noted, “And now that he’s doing it and he’s here, he’s going to leave and so are others, and we’re going to keep doing it. We are – and by the way, I find it ironic that a lot of these people out there defending the First Amendment speech – alleged free speech rights of these Hamas sympathizers –”
Pressing onward with her takedown of her and the leftist agenda generally as Brennan kept interrupting with stammered, one-word answers that contributed nothing to the conversation, Rubio insisted, “They had no problem, okay, pressuring social media to censor American political speech. So I think it’s ironic and hypocritical. But the bottom line is this: If you are in this country to promote Hamas, to promote terrorist organizations, to participate in vandalism, to participate – in acts of rebellion and riots on campus, we never would have let you in if we had known that, and now that we know it, you’re going to leave.”
Brennan then asked, before returning to her stammered, one-word responses, if only pro-Palestine visa-holders were being deported. Rubio retorted, “I think anybody who’s here in favor – look, we want to get rid of Tren de Aragua gang members. They’re terrorists too. We – the President designated them, asked me to designate, and I did, as a terrorist organization.”
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He concluded, “We want to get rid of them as well. You are – we don’t want terrorists in America. I don’t know how hard that is to understand. We want people – we don’t want people in our country that are going to be committing crimes and undermining our national security or the public safety.”
Brennan then quickly wrapped up the interview, unable to show why he was wrong in that. Watch them feud here: