© AP“The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor,” Vice President JD Vance said at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
In his first major address abroad, the vice president spurred officials at the Munich Security Conference to return to "the extraordinary blessings of liberty" that won them the Cold War — rather than crushing dissent, policing speech and infringing on religious freedoms.
Vance, 40, also vowed that any leaders willing to join him and President Trump in the task would find "a new sheriff in town" ready to "fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square."
"The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor," he told the officials gathered in Germany.
"What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America."
European leaders applauded the vice president when he invoked their shared commitments, but were less receptive to some of his more direct attacks on their nations' laws around speech — including the ban on some populist lawmakers from taking the stage at the conference.
He also brushed off concerns from European leaders about tech billionaire Elon Musk engaging in their own political debates on the continent.
"If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you can survive a few months of Elon Musk," he said of the 22-year-old environmental activist from Sweden.
"I believe deeply that there is no security if you're afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people," he said, adding there's "nothing" Europe can do for the US if it is "afraid" of its citizens.
"You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail," he added, in a nod to Trump's 2024 landslide victory.
© REUTERSA man walks near the site of a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine February 12, 2025.
Adam Smith-Connor was fined £9,000 for praying silently in protest outside an abortion clinic in the UK, he fumed, while the Scottish government warned residents near another clinic similarly against "even private prayer within their own homes."
"The government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thoughtcrime in Britain and across Europe," Vance said. "Free speech, I fear, is in retreat."
The vice president acknowledged that the US under former President Joe Biden had also fueled this democratic "crisis ... of our own making" by quelling COVID-19 dissent — while letting far worse actors gain a foothold through lax immigration policies.
"In Washington, there's a new sheriff in town," he said, borrowing a phrase bandied about after Trump's return to the White House. "Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that."
Vance also said there is "nothing more urgent" than countering the issue of mass migration that has come to Europe, which took on new urgency after an Afghan migrant drove through a crowded street in Munich on Thursday, injuring 30 people.
"Almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all time high," he said. "It's a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all time high."
"And we know the situation. It didn't materialize in a vacuum. It's a result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent and others across the world over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city," he said, referring to the attack.
© REUTERSVance accused European leaders of using “Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation” to suppress dissenting ideas.
In a rare point of praise, Vance singled out the Brexit movement for having been the only truly democratic response to European nations letting "open the floodgates to millions of illegal immigrants."
"Agree or disagree, they voted for it," he said. "And more and more, all over Europe, they're voting for political leaders who promise an end to out-of-control migration."
In 2022, 5.1 million migrants came to the continent from non-EU countries — more than double the 2.4 million that entered in 2021.
Russia's war of aggression had also caused millions of Ukrainians to flee into Europe.
Vance's address offered no comments on the ongoing war between the two nations other than to say the US was negotiating for a "reasonable settlement" and that NATO nations needed to shoulder more of their own defense burden.
Reader Comments
"The United States Senate opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation."
Historically, a very bad role model