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 Callas 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 Callas 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, Callas 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 Callas of warmongering by attributing to
01:18her the quote, if Europe cannot defeat Russia how then are we supposed to defeat China? But Callas did not
01:25actually say this. These comments are from a discussion hosted by the Hudson Institute in 2025
01:31where Callas argued that failing to pressure Russia over the war in Ukraine would weaken Europe's credibility
01:36in responding to a larger China. Since then, short-term extract from the discussion have repeatedly resurfaced
01:43online and misleadingly been presented as fresh comments.
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