U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, over the weekend, squashed what he referred to as a "stupid media narrative" that has been put forth by CBS's Margaret Brennan.  

He did so, according to Breitbart News, when he appeared on Face the Nation, where he was interviewed - if that is the right word for it - by Brennan.

You can watch the encounter for yourself here:

🚨 HOLY CRAP! CBS' Margaret Brennan thought she knew more about foreign policy and the Russia-Ukraine negotiations than Marco Rubio.

She didn't. He put her in her place. Rubio is a masterclass.

"No it isn't, that's not why...That's not true...No."pic.twitter.com/ZpZASCsFYQ

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 17, 2025

"That's not true"

The interview took place as the Trump administration works to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump had just met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. Rubio's interview took place on Sunday.

There, Brennan tried to claim "there is concern from the Europeans that President Zelensky is going to be bullied into signing something away." What Brennan left unstated is that, in her view, it would be Trump who would be doing the bullying.

Rubio, though, wasn't having it. He replied:

No, it isn’t. That’s not why [the Europeans are] coming. That’s not true. They’re not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelensky from being bullied. They’re not coming- in fact — They are coming here because we’ve been working with the Europeans. We talked to them last week … The president talked to these leaders as early as Thursday … This is such a stupid media narrative.

At this point, Brennan brought up what happened the last time Zelensky visited the White House, when he got into a spat with President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.

Rubio noted that "we’ve had a bunch of meetings since then."

The end goal

Elsewhere in the interview, Rubio emphasized the main goal of the Trump administration's involvement in the Russia-Ukraine talks.

He said:

Our goal here is to have a peace agreement to end this war. Okay? And obviously, we felt, and I agreed, that there was enough progress, not a lot of progress, but enough progress made in those talks to allow us to move to the next phase. If not, we wouldn’t be having Zelensky flying all the way over here. We wouldn’t be having all the Europeans coming all the way over here.

Rubio went on to caution that this does not necessarily mean that a peace deal will be signed.

We'll have to see how things play out.

In a separate interview, Rubio also emphasized that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is "not our war."