This may have been the most fabulous weekend for card-carrying American patriots since U.S. Hockey beat the Soviet Union in 1980. English author and parliamentarian Edward Bulwer-Lytton once wrote, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Well, whoever wrote Vance’s speech needs to take a bow. Between his words and Vance’s rhetorical acumen, this speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday not so much changed the world as revealed the hands each player held.

Coincidentally, I was also in Germany this weekend, but in Karlsruhe, across the southern side of the country from Munich. I met up with good friends who are politically connected, so I’ll pepper their views across this piece. It was a fascinating weekend, punctuated by the most excellent German beer.

As for my part, I’m positively thrilled America has recaptured her rightful place in the world, arguing for more freedom of speech, a strong Europe that can defend itself, and peace with China and Russia. The American voter must ask himself, “What have I been voting for all these years?”

The Key Points of Vance’s Speech

External Versus Internal Threats

Vance said:

But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, 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. 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.

I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany, too.

Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years, we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.

The European reaction to this was akin to Heidi Klum’s when Donald Trump famously said, “Sadly, she’s no longer a 10.” Ouch. This was merely when the uncomfortable squirming in the room began.

Vance went on to list many examples of European governments, including the UK, ignoring free speech and putting people in prison for social media posts or silently praying for the unborn too close to an abortion clinic.

Mass Migration

Vance went on:

And of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all-time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And, of course, it’s gotten much higher since.

…

It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-twenties, already known to police, rammed a car into a crowd and shatters a community. Unity. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction? No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they are voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. Now, I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don’t have to agree with me.

Brexit! Vance mentioned Brexit! Now, he really upset them.

Woke Scolding

The line of the speech sadly didn’t get a laugh:

Even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential — and trust me, I say this with all humor — if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.

Genius. But not to the Euro audience. They were furious by this point.

In Europe’s defense, it would have been nice if Vance included the fact that Europe is deindustrializing because America (and/or her confederates) blew up Nordstream and ordered Europe to buy American LNG at four times the price of Russian pipelined gas. He could’ve blamed it all on Biden and the money laundering in Ukraine. But Vance skipped that part, and I’m sure Europe feels foolish for mindlessly following Potatohead Biden.

Immediately after Vance’s speech calling for freedom of speech, Boris Pistorius, Germany’s Defense Minister, made his point perfectly by calling the speech “unacceptable.” For crying out loud, Boris, you’ve got Germans making memes about it:

But if you want any more evidence that weak men lead to hard times, look no further than to the Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, who closed the conference by crying:

Credit: @Artemisfornow

Oh, the irony. The above man’s name is Christoph Heugsen. He was the German Ambassador to the UN who laughed when President Trump said in 2018 that Germany was dependent on Russian energy. Heugsen was Angela Merkel’s top advisor during Germany’s insane open border policy in 2015. When his email was hacked, the authorities discovered he had given his wife a lucrative job at the UN. But that was swept under the rug because the hackers were alleged to be Russian. 

But Americans must understand that the crybabies at this conference are the Bidens, Kamalas, and Mayor Petes of Europe. The normal people are thrilled, as am I. As I wrote to my friend and colleague Ray Blanco, “The Donald and Vance terraforming Europe is the best thing to happen to the European people since the Renaissance.”

But it gets better.

According to CNN, Defense Secretary Hegseth laid down the law:

“The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” Hegseth said. And he added that any security guarantees offered to Ukraine “must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.”

“To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” he said.

Hegseth also said that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, before Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine, “is an unrealistic objective.”

Keith Kellogg, the Trump administration's special envoy to Ukraine, also said that the EU won’t be at the negotiating table with the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine. The Europeans are worried the Americans will negotiate badly (and not without reason).

While we’re in Munich, let’s talk German politics.

Germany’s “Far Right Party”

As we sat around the beer hall in Karlsruhe, the conversation naturally turned to the AfD, or Alternative for Deutschland (Germany). Elon Musk recently hosted an X Space with its leader, Alice Weidel.

“You know, she’s a lesbian?”

“Huh?”

We don’t “out” people in the Rude. This is common knowledge, except I had no idea. But it gets better:

“And German Muslims support her. They’re one of her voter bases.”

Mind blown. Except, we’ve seen this movie before.

Before the 2015 Angela Merkel mass migration disaster, there was a massive influx of Muslims, mainly Turks, into Germany. But they’ve settled. They speak German fluently… and they’re conservative. They don’t like it when criminals hop over the border, either. So, AfD policy works for them and many more of Germany’s immigrant community.

To sum it up, a lesbian is leading a “far right” party with plenty of immigrant support for the first time in German history.

It sounds a lot like a twice-divorced real estate mogul who took the Catholic vote 58-42 and captured the southern Texas border, which is full of Hispanics.

 But it gets even better…

Why the European Elites Are Scared

Alice Weidel isn’t one of those purple-haired gender studies PhDs who has been unemployed her whole life. Her PhD is in international development, and she wrote her doctoral thesis on the future of the Chinese pension system with health economist Peter Oberender at the Faculty of Law and Economics in Bayreuth.

She started her career at Goldman Sachs Asset Management in Frankfurt but moved to China for six years to work for the Bank of China. Like most people who know anything about economics, Weidel is against the euro. But she thinks a disorderly unwinding of the currency will happen rather than a German exit. Weidel’s role model is Margaret Thatcher, which sends a frisson up the backs of her European opponents.

Weidel is against the abolition of cash, but is happy for Spain, Portugal, and Greece to leave the eurozone. Weidel supports tax cuts and abolishing inheritance tax and the minimum wage.

In short, she’s not at all far right. She’s just against the current system’s idiocy.

Wrap Up

In short, this was a great weekend. America laid down the law, and Europe is no longer under the delusion it can freeride on America’s largesse.

And for a bonus: after classlessly booing the American national anthem, the insufferable Canadians lost to the Yanks in ice hockey 3-1 in Montreal. No Senators for Canada until they learn how to play hockey, I say!

Have a great week ahead.