Rubio Taunts CBS Host In Tense Interview About Mahmoud Khalil Arrest: ‘You Should Watch The News’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been a staunch defender of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda on multiple occasions, including when it comes to removing dangerous illegal immigrants from the U.S. as soon as possible.

That policy has been tested in recent days as protesters gather to express their opposition to the detention of a Syrian-born Columbia University student who reportedly led violent anti-Israel demonstrations on American soil.

Rubio continued defending the decision during a recent interview on CBS News, explaining that Mahmoud Khalil is just one example of the White House’s effort to address such threats.

When host Margaret Brennan pushed back on Rubio’s justification, he was quick to point out her apparent ignorance on the topic, as the Daily Caller reported:

Brennan, however, continued pressing the secretary of state, asking if there was “any evidence of a link to terrorism” or if it was simply “his point of view” that officials disagreed with.

“Yeah, they take over — I mean, you should watch the news. These guys take over entire buildings. They vandalize colleges. They shut down colleges,” Rubio responded.

“We covered it intensely,” Brennan hit back. “I’m asking about the specific justification for the revocation of his visa. Was there any evidence of material support for terrorism?”

Rubio pushed back against the CBS host, stating that Khalil was “negotiating on behalf of people that took over a campus and vandalized buildings.” He added that acting as a “negotiator” was a “crime in and of itself” before emphasizing that the U.S. doesn’t “need these people” in the country.

“We never should have allowed them 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, libraries and buildings being vandalized,’ we never would have let him in,” Rubio continued.

The Khalil case has fueled increased support among some Americans for the type of policy Rubio outlined:

AMERICA FIRST.

Get Mahmoud Khalil and every other terrorist out of our country.

— Max 📟 (@MaxNordau) March 10, 2025

This is real leadership.

We must protect Americans from these Islamist extremists.

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) March 10, 2025

Plenty of leftists who are clearly sympathetic to his pro-Hamas rhetoric, however, are using the arrest as their latest excuse to cause chaos in the streets:

🇵🇸NOW: A huge crowd has gathered in NYC to protest the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil by DHS for his role in leading the movement against the genocide in Gaza! pic.twitter.com/Wxj9YxbKCJ

— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) March 10, 2025

Rubio has spoken out forcefully in support of Khalil’s detention in other forums, as Fox News reported last week:

“When you come to the United States as a visitor, which is what a visa is – which is how this individual entered this country, on a visitor’s visa – as a visitor, we can deny you that visa,” Rubio said. “When you tell us when you apply, ‘Hi, I’m trying to get into the United States on a student visa. I am a big supporter of Hamas, a murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that rapes teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that returns more bodies than live hostages,’ if you tell us that you are in favor of a group like this and if you tell us when you apply for your visa, ‘and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, antisemitic activities, I intend to shut down your universities,’ if you told us all these things when you applied for your visa, we would deny your visa. I’d hope we would.”

“If you actually end up doing that once you’re in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it, and if you end up having a green card, not citizenship, but a green card as a result of that visa while you’re here doing those activities, we’re going to kick you out. It’s as simple as that. This is not about free speech,” Rubio said. “This is about people who do not have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a greed card by the way.”

“So when you apply for a student visa or any visa to enter the United States, we have a right to deny you for virtually any reason, but I think being a supporter of Hamas and coming into our universities and turning them upside down, being complicit in what are clearly crimes, vandalization, complicit in shutting down institutions,” Rubio added. “There are kids at these schools that can’t go to class. You pay all this money to these high-priced schools that are supposed to be of great esteem, and you can’t even go to class. You’re afraid to go to class because there are lunatics running around with covers on their faces screaming terrifying things. If you told us that’s what you intended to do when you came to America, we would have never let you in. And if you do it once you get in, we’re going to revoke it and kick you out.”

Here’s a clip of his recent interview with Brennan: