US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced new restrictions on foreign visas, including student visas, targeting individuals who he determines to be critical of the state of Israel. They will not be allowed into the United States if they express such views, he said yesterday. He also slammed foreign governments that scrutinize the social media posts of Americans and punish them for exercising free speech rights. So...is he pro-free speech or anti free speech?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is out today, so I will do one of my briefings on a topic.
Today, I'd like to talk a little bit about Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, and also about speech, and also about Secretary Rubio's war on speech.
You will recall the deportations or attempted deportations of several students that we've talked about here in the past over the past couple of months, the revocation of student visas, hundreds of them.
Rubio himself bragged about revoking these student visas, upending people's lives, people who weren't convicted of any crime, nor were they charged of a crime, many of whom's only crime was protesting on college campuses, exercising one of our most cherished rights and freedoms, the freedom of speech and the freedom of expression.
And again, you don't have to like what people are expressing to understand the value of freedom of expression.
And people say, well, they're foreigners, they're students, they're here from overseas.
They have no rights of free speech.
Well, of course, we've talked about this before as well.
I would recommend you read Judge Andrew Politano's work, including a recent article we have up today.
The freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights are not granted by government.
I can say that's over and over again, and people still don't seem to get it.
They are the recognition of the state of nature that exists and an adherence by the United States government to this state of nature, which is that man is endowed with these rights not by government, but by nature, their creator, or whatever you believe in that particular case.
But they are the state of nature.
And so, therefore, absolutely, when someone comes here and peacefully exercises any of these rights, they are certainly allowed to by our Constitution.
The government can't restrict them.
Nevertheless, Rubio has bragged about restricting people in the United States from expressing themselves.
And he's done it in actually rather a hypocritic way.
And I have a couple of examples.
Now, the first one to talk about is Rubio yesterday.
He came out with a new policy on issuing student visas.
Now, there were several of them.
One is that no Chinese students can come here.
They've got to revoke their visas and kick them all out, which is a pretty big problem.
It's sort of like, ironically, what you'd expect the Chinese government to do or any supposedly authoritarian country to do.
You know, North Korea will kick out all these dirty Americans, that sort of thing.
So we're doing, you know, he's doing the exact same thing, but this is a different one that I want to talk about today.
And if we can put up that first clip, this is what Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement yesterday.
He said, announcement of a visa restriction policy.
And just leave that up because I'm going to try to read it.
Targeting foreign nationals who censor Americans.
Free speech, free speech is among the most cherished rights we enjoy as Americans.
This right, legally enshrined in our Constitution, has set us apart as a beacon of freedom around the world.
Even as we take action to reject censorship at home, we see troubling instances of foreign governments and foreign officials picking up the slack.
In some instances, foreign officials have taken flagrant censorship actions against U.S. tech companies and citizens and residents when they have no authority to do so.
Today, announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States.
It's unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on U.S. citizens or U.S. residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on U.S. soil.
So essentially, he's saying that we are taking up, we've taken up the cause of free speech at home.
We defend it vigorously, unless you're a foreign student.
But nevertheless, if you are scrutinizing Americans' social media posts overseas, you will not get a visa to the United States.
You are restricted from coming.
Now, go to the next one.
This is how Politico covered it.
Rubio targets foreign nationals who he alleges police Americans' social media posts.
There could be some understanding about this.
This could be something that we could somewhat get behind if they're trying to attack American expression.
Now, go to the next one.
This is from the article, Secretary of State.
Rubio announced Wednesday a new visa restriction policy targeting officials who he says are complicit in censoring what Americans say online.
So, foreign officials who scrutinize Americans' social media posts with the intent of censoring them or restricting them in any way are to be punished, are not allowed to come to the U.S.
Well, here is the same Marco Rubio just last month.
If you go to the next clip, the next clip there: Marco Rubio orders diplomats to search social media accounts of student visa applicants.
He is literally announcing that that is our policy, U.S. policy, is to do exactly what he's attacked governments overseas for doing.
Now, go to the next one.
This is from The Independent.
This is the same article: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued an order to U.S. diplomats stationed abroad to search through the social media accounts of those applying for student and other kinds of visas to come to the U.S.
The effort to stop anyone suspected of criticizing the U.S. or Israel comes as the Trump administration is stepping up efforts to detain and deport students already in the U.S. who have been found to have taken part in protests against the war on Gaza.
So these two things shouldn't be happening at the same time, just a month apart.
You cannot scrutinize American social media posts, but to American diplomats, you must scrutinize the media posts.
Now, go to the next one.
Brian McDonald explains this very well.
He's a journalist who's lived overseas.
He explains it for us in a very helpful way.
Marco Rubio's logic.
If a foreign official helps suppress an American's tweet abroad, they'll be denied a U.S. visa.
But if a foreigner peacefully protests in America, say, against Israeli policy, they risk deportation or surveillance.
It's not just hypocrisy, Brian writes, it's parody.
And I would have to say that is accurate.
It is parody.
So go to the next one now.
This is a new announcement.
In addition to don't look at our social media, but we will look at yours, he's announced a new visa policy as well.
Rubio announces vigorous new visa policy against critics of Israel wishing to come to the U.S.
No such penalty exists for foreign critics of the U.S.
Now, you might say this is RT.
They're trying to make us look bad.
Those evil, nasty Russians.
Well, let's listen to Marco Rubio himself explain his policy of denying visas to people who have a view of a foreign country that he personally doesn't like.
Go ahead.
Under President Trump, the United States will stand with the Jewish people.
We have implemented a vigorous new visa policy that will prevent foreign nationals from coming to the United States to foment hatred against our Jewish community.
We are holding international organizations and nations accountable for rhetoric against Israel that resurfaces in the manifesto of monsters like Iran and Sarah's Killer.
But we do see an eventual light at the end of this long tunnel of suffering.
One can imagine.
Okay, we can take that off.
So what he's saying here, he's accusing people who are critical of the policy of a foreign country that they are pro-homance and they want to hurt Jewish people, which is not the case.
He has not restricted it to people who come over here and commit violent acts, which are already illegal, of course, and subject to deportation, but people who express themselves politically in ways that Marco Rubio and perhaps his boss, perhaps others in the administration, don't like.
That is an attack on speech.
That is not standing up for free speech.
And either he's hypocritical, evil, or just not that bright.
I would probably go with C, but who knows?
Maybe all of the above.
He seems to know, he doesn't seem to understand the contradiction in these two terms.
Now go to the next one.
Megatron has posted on X another explainer about this policy.
If we can put that next clip up, Marco Rubio officially announced that anyone who dares criticize Israel will not be granted a visa to enter the United States.
By the way, this doesn't apply if you criticize the U.S. itself.
So you could be out there probably saying death to America or Trump's deterred, whatever.
That'll be fine.
But just do not criticize.
Restricting Speech on Campus00:03:57
And why is he doing this?
Why is this frantic frenzy to suppress speech and criticism of this foreign country?
Because more and more people, and we're seeing it in the polls, are critical as they see the slaughter in Gaza, as they see the destruction of the people of Gaza, as they see 90,000 tons of U.S. bombs.
As Dr. Paul and I said yesterday, 90,000 tons in less than two years given to Israel to destroy Gaza and all of the money that the U.S. citizens are robbed for to pay for this.
People are getting concerned.
Foreigners are getting concerned, but also Americans are getting concerned.
So the reaction is to circle the wagons and start restricting speech.
Now, that never works.
Someone recently posted: you know, never in history have the people restricting speech been the good guys, and that certainly is the case here.
Now, the other part of this, of course, is his hypocrisy in kicking people out who didn't do anything.
We've talked about it before, who simply have wrote op-eds in their school paper, demonstrated peacefully in a protest, and actually had that second clip we can put up of Rubio talking about actually taking joy in admitting that he's kicking people out for completely protected speech in the United States.
Let's listen to this exchange.
So, you revoked her student visa based on an op-ed which trumps the supreme law of the land, which is the Constitution.
Someone's coming up here to stir problems on our campus.
We're going to revoke their visa.
She didn't do any of that.
She wrote an op-ed.
She wrote an op-ed.
And I'm talking to you about her particular piece of claims on your weeks.
Reclaiming my time.
You revoked her student visa because she wrote an op-ed.
I would do more.
We're going to do more.
I have another question for you.
Would you revoke that?
You revoked her student visa for writing an op-ed.
Yes, she said, yes, proudly.
And I will do many more.
Now, I feel awkward personally, sitting here putting up Representative J. Paul as a champion of the Constitution.
It's a document that she regularly tramples on.
Nevertheless, in this particular instance, she does have a point about kicking people out of the country for writing an op-ed exercising free speech.
Precisely the reason many people come to the United States.
They come to the United States because there is a promise that you can do things that you can't do in many of their own home countries.
Expressing yourself is one of them.
And we're seeing increasingly in the EU, for example, attacks on people expressing themselves.
In Germany, some protesters were beat up yesterday for demonstrating against the policies of Israel.
Now, Americans aren't getting beat up yet by the police for exercising this rights, but first they came for the foreigners, those on visas.
And trust me, it never ends there.
I'm going to close this out a little early today, but I'm going to put up that last clip if we can.
This is just as random.
This is a random replier, but sometimes there is a lot of wisdom in random repliers on X.
This is Rika, I guess the name is pronounced.
And this was a comment posted underneath that video I just put up.
Rubio really said the quiet part out loud.
Writing an op-ed is now grounds for deportation.
This isn't about stirring up trouble.
It's about silencing dissent.
She exercised free speech and he proudly yanked her visa like it's some authoritarian flex.
Reminder: the First Amendment doesn't come with an asterisk that says U.S. citizens only.
If writing an opinion piece gets you kicked out, what's next?
Rubio's Visa Abuses00:01:30
Book bans?
Oh, wait.
Dot, dot, dot.
I think that's very well said because it doesn't stop there.
Now, Rubio has a strange little bit of actual authority to determine who gets visas in his role as Secretary of State.
But I would submit that he is abusing that authority.
That authority is to restrict individuals who he believes, there should be some evidence to it, in my opinion, who he believes could cause great harm to the United States.
Maybe people like the current ruler of Syria, who was not until very recently was on our most wanted list.
But no, no.
He has that authority, but he's exercising in a way that is hypocritical, contradictory, and designed to undermine the Constitution for his own personal political views.
Now, you may like Israel, you may dislike Israel, you may want to say good things about Israel or bad things about Israel, but you can't, as Secretary of State, determine that no one who doesn't feel exactly the way you do about Israel is allowed to come into the country.
That's not how it works, Secretary Rubio.
And eventually he will be called out for this hypocrisy, and he will have to answer for it at some point in the future.
Until then, use your free speech or you will lose it.