Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first major appearances on the world stage were immediately met with rebuke from longtime American allies.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called Vance’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference — during which the vice president downplayed threats from Russia and China against Europe and called out European nations for retreating from “fundamental values” — “not acceptable.”
“He spoke of the annulment of democracy, and if I understood him correctly, he compares Europe with some authoritarian regimes. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not acceptable,” he said.
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, said the speech was “the total humiliation of all European leaders” and that the people around him in the room were “shocked” in a post on X.
And Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy lead, said she felt the United States was intentionally being combative, adding that she wished it focused more on the war in Ukraine.
“Listening to that speech, they try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to pick a fight with our friends,” Kallas said at the conference, according to Reuters.
Vance’s speech Friday garnered little applause. The audience reportedly groaned and laughed off his comments about the “threats within” Europe, according to Politico’s Dasha Burns.
“To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election,” Vance said.
At one point, Vance acknowledged the cold response.
“I hope that’s not the last bit of applause that I get,” Vance said at the top after acknowledging the “horrendous attack” in Munich on Thursday, when a car drove into a union demonstration, injuring dozens.“In our democracy, every opinion has a voice,” Pistorius said in response. Pistorius described Germany’s policies as directly opposed to the repression of free speech, going off his original prepared remarks before a separate meeting at the conference to respond to Vance.He specifically pointed out that Germany’s far-right political party, AfD — which Elon Musk has openly supported — is not censored.
“If the vice president had the opportunity to switch on his TV when he arrived yesterday, he would have seen one of those candidates on prime-time TV,” he said. “Democracy does not mean that a vociferous minority will automatically be right, and they cannot decide what truth is.”
Hegseth’s comments at the NATO ministerial meeting earlier this week were met with similar pushback from European allies.
“We can talk all we want about values. Values are important,” Hegseth said. “But you can’t shoot values, you can’t shoot flags and you can’t shoot strong speeches. There is no replacement for hard power.”
Earlier at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Hegseth had claimed that “pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective” for Ukraine and that the U.S. would not support Ukraine becoming part of NATO.
“We shouldn’t take anything off the table before the negotiations have even started,” Kallas said according to PBS.Stateside, Democrats jumped on Vance’s performance in Munich.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the speech “frightening bullshit” in a post on X.
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.