00:04Welcome to your news fact-checking show. This is Noah Schuman and you're watching The Cube.
00:08This video of EU foreign policy chief Kaya Kallas in Estonia has prompted a wave of posts and
00:14headlines. In Europe we have a very clear understanding of the diagnosis of the disease
00:21but we don't have agreement on the cure and if you have a very very difficult disease
00:29like you have a cancer then you have two choices either you increase the morphine or you start
00:36chemotherapy. While Kallas remarks were controversial some online users are portraying them as are calling
00:42China a cancer and separately engaging in warmongering. Both blunt her interpretations
00:48that what she actually said. Unlike what the post claimed Kallas did not call China a cancer rather
00:54she was using a medical metaphor while discussing Europe's response to what she described
00:59as Chinese economic coercion and trade pressure. She spoke of morphine referring to subsidies helping
01:05European countries compete and chemotherapy in the context of tougher EU measures that could trigger
01:11Beijing's retaliation. In separate viral posts user also accused Kallas of warmongering by attributing
01:17to her the quote if Europe cannot defeat Russia how then are we supposed to defeat China? But Kallas did
01:24not actually say this. These comments are from a discussion hosted by the Hudson Institute in 2025
01:31where Kallas argued that failing to pressure Russia over the war in Ukraine would weaken Europe's
01:36credibility in responding to a larger China. Since then shortened extract from the discussion have
01:41repeatedly resurfaced online and misleadingly been presented as fresh comments.
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