His comments shocked attendees at the Munich Security Conference and seemed to target efforts to sideline the hard-right party the Alternative for Germany.
transcript
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. And what I worry about is the threat from within. Shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course, that’s important. But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me, and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for? And I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges. But the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis, I believe, we all face together, is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.
Jim TankersleySteven Erlanger and David E. Sanger
Reporting from Munich
Vice President JD Vance urged European leaders on Friday to end the isolation of far-right parties across the continent, an extraordinary embrace of a once-fringe political movement with which the Trump administration shares a common approach on migration, identity and internet speech.
The address stunned and silenced hundreds of attendees at the Munich Security Conference, a forum where top-level politicians, diplomats and analysts had gathered expecting to hear President Trump’s plans for ending the war in Ukraine and Europe’s defense against a rising Russian threat.
The vice president singled out his German hosts, telling them to drop their objections to working with a party that has often reveled in banned Nazi slogans and has been shunned from government as a result. He did not mention the party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, by name, but directly referred to the longstanding agreement by mainstream German politicians to freeze out the group, parts of which have been formally classified as extremist by German intelligence.
“There is no room for firewalls,” Mr. Vance said, bringing some gasps in the hall.
He punctuated the message by meeting on Friday with Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor in this month’s election, as well as other German leaders. Altogether, it was an unusual intervention in the domestic politics of a democratic American ally.
The vice president offered what may be a preview under Mr. Trump of a redefinition of a trans-Atlantic relationship built on postwar bonds of stability between allied governments. Mr. Vance aggressively challenged the diplomats in the hall in Munich, telling them that their biggest security threat was not from China or Russia, but “the enemy within” — what he called their suppression of abortion protests and other forms of free speech.
He made the claim at a moment when Russia was waging the largest ground war in Europe since 1945 over Ukraine. It signaled the Trump administration’s priorities — expanding the MAGA movement abroad rather than countering President Vladimir V. Putin’s aggression.
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