By Abe Greenwald
Monday, February 17, 2025
JD Vance delivered an unexpectedly confrontational speech
at the Munich Security Conference on Friday. He warned European leaders of
their increasing disregard for the foundational ideals of Western democracy.
“The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s
not China, it’s not any other external actor,” he said. “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.” These words needed to
be said—just not by JD Vance in 2025. Europeans aren’t going to listen to an
American who lectures them about respecting differences of opinion and election
results, if that American also serves as vice president to a man who seeks to
punish those with whom he disagrees and who doesn’t accept that he lost a
presidential election.
Vance cited examples from multiple European countries
where religious rights had been trampled, popular opinions had been censored,
and where election results have been nullified. “Now to many of us on the other
side of the Atlantic,” he said, “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.”
That’s all great. But Donald Trump still calls both the
2020 election and the 2022 midterm elections “rigged” because people with an
alternative viewpoint won. On Friday, Vance said, “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.” Struck, was he?
Someone there should have asked Vance about his own thoughts on the 2020
election. It’s the only topic in the world on which he’s incoherent.
To be sure, Trump’s election denial didn’t start the
trend of Western politicians and courts refusing to accept democratic results.
Democrats in the U.S. have been playing that game since George W. Bush beat Al
Gore in 2000. And Hillary Clinton continues to say that her 2016 loss to Trump
was illegitimate. But Trump has advanced the ball far down the field, and some
of what Vance was lamenting in Germany just picks up where Trump left
off.
Everything Vance said about the importance of respecting
Western values is true. And yet the speech was doomed from the start to be a
flop. You didn’t have to be there to feel the chill in the room; it came
through the screen. Vance failed to deliver a vital message to Europe not
merely because European leaders resent being publicly corrected by Americans,
but because it’s absurd for the Trump administration to lecture Western
governments on accepting political differences.
Yes, of course, the Biden administration and the
Democrats generally made a habit of trampling on the rights of their political
enemies. They methodically used lawfare, suppressed dissenting speech, and
killed legitimate news stories in hopes of hiding the truth and destroying
their opposition. What’s worse, our supposedly free and impartial media helped
them out at every turn. And it all fits with the growing “liberal” illiberalism
in the West that Vance was addressing.
But that doesn’t automatically render Trump the exemplar
of open discourse. He’s done many laudable things in the brief time that he’s
been in office, and some of them (such as cracking down on DEI) do make for a
more open public square. But it’s hard to say that he’s reversed the national
trends of denying dissent and delivering political punishment. It’s not only
that he still rejects his 2020 loss. Consider what his Justice
Department is now up to. Last week, Trump’s acting deputy attorney general Emil
Bove ordered prosecutors, for nakedly political reasons, to dismiss corruption
charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. And when Danielle Sassoon, the
interim U.S. attorney then resigned, Bove said she’d be subjected to an
internal investigation. The Justice Department’s new “Weaponization Working
Group,” nominally intended de-weaponize the justice system, is instead
weaponizing it in the other direction. It’s going after anyone in the DOJ and
FBI by who’s had even the most glancing connection to legal cases brought
against Trump. What’s more, it is “provid[ing] quarterly reports to the White
House regarding the progress of the review.” As Andy McCarthy noted in National Review yesterday, “Over the past
four years. I vaguely remember President Trump’s saying—incessantly, come to
think of it—that what made the lawfare against him treasonously corrupt was
that President Biden (or whoever was actually in charge) was directing and
monitoring it from the White House.” And while some of Trump’s own lawsuits
against media outlets have merit, others are obvious retribution plays.
A final thought. Some days, I write positively about the
Trump administration. Some days, negatively. As a result, I get criticized as
either a MAGA true believer or a hopeless victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
If you read this and dismiss me as the latter, you’re not listening to Vance’s
words either. Because he’s the wrong messenger.
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