J.D. Vance confirmed what should have been obvious to anyone paying attention—our European allies, the ones constantly lecturing America about “democratic values,” have been gutting those very principles at home. And now, when the Vice President of the United States dares to point out their blatant hypocrisy, they clutch their pearls, gasp in horror, and apparently, in some cases, cry. You can’t make this stuff up.
Vance, never one to shy away from uncomfortable truths, laid it all out. You can’t come begging for more U.S. military support to defend “freedom” while simultaneously building a censorship regime that criminalizes speech, jails dissidents, and silences opposition. European leaders were reportedly aghast—of course, they were. Nothing rattles these bureaucrats more than being called out on their nonsense in public, and Vance did exactly that.
JD Vance went to the Munich Security Conference and roasted the entire continent of Europe for being petty tyrants and criminalizing freedom of speech, including a British man arrested for praying at an abortion clinic.
pic.twitter.com/o51VoWZ6Mr— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 14, 2025
Take the EU’s so-called “Digital Services Act,” pushed by Thierry Breton, one of Europe’s leading anti-free speech crusaders. Under the guise of combating “misinformation,” it hands European authorities near-unchecked power to censor content they don’t like. And this isn’t just theoretical—it’s already happening. Canada, under the ever-smug Justin Trudeau, actually blocked citizenship for a Russian dissident because her past conviction in Russia (for opposing the war in Ukraine, no less) violated Canada’s laws against “false information.” In other words, Trudeau’s government aligned its censorship laws with Putin’s Russia—all in the name of democracy, of course.
And it’s not just Canada. The United Kingdom has arrested people for praying silently near abortion clinics. Sweden prosecuted a man for burning a Koran, with the judge ruling that freedom of expression doesn’t mean you can “say or do anything.” That’s funny, because I could have sworn that was exactly what freedom of expression meant. But apparently, in modern Europe, “blasphemy laws” are making a comeback—just with a new progressive coat of paint.
Vance wasn’t just pointing out the censorship—he dismantled the entire premise behind it. These European elites claim that they need to combat “disinformation” to protect their fragile democracies. But as Vance so brilliantly put it, if your democracy can be toppled by a few hundred thousand dollars of digital ads from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with. That’s not a national security crisis—that’s an admission that your entire system is a house of cards.
The reaction was as predictable as it was pathetic. One anonymous former House Democrat staffer—because, of course, they hid behind anonymity—was “aghast,” ranting that Vance was “blaming the victim.” Blaming the victim? No, he was calling out the real threat: the fact that Western governments, under the banner of stopping “disinformation,” have become the very thing they claim to be fighting against—authoritarian regimes policing thought.
And the best part? His speech was so brutally honest, so cutting, that it reportedly caused German officials to cry. These are the same people who, for decades, have happily shredded free speech, even arresting citizens for their ringtones, and now they’re crying because the U.S. Vice President finally said out loud what needed to be said.
During a response, Vance made one of the leaders cry:
The poor little chairman of the Munich Security Conference had a full-on pathetic meltdown, sobbing like a toddler, all because JD Vance dared to hurt his precious feelings by criticizing European leaders. pic.twitter.com/Lj9ZckbDpC
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 17, 2025
Vance was called a “wrecking ball” for delivering this speech. Good. That’s exactly what these smug, self-righteous European leaders needed—a verbal sledgehammer to the carefully constructed lie that they are the guardians of democracy. They aren’t. They are the ones tearing it apart, piece by piece, and expecting America to foot the bill while they do it.
German state police raid a home, seizing the suspect’s laptop and phone. The crime? Posting a racist cartoon online. https://t.co/4LHUP1ZWrB pic.twitter.com/tEC1N1Nm1L
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 17, 2025
The real question is whether we’ll let their allies in the U.S. drag us down the same road. Because make no mistake—there are plenty of Democrats here who look at Europe’s censorship laws and see a model, not a warning. But for now, at least, they just got a front-row seat to what happens when someone with a spine steps up and calls it out. And that? That was glorious.
Quite a bookend to CBS News’ day on this subject https://t.co/HjDmJMxhOn
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 17, 2025
Here’s the Vice President’s full speech:
JD Vance’s speech to the authoritarian leaders of the EU will go down as one of the best speeches of this decade.
Angry faces in the audience as Vance suggests Europe is now barely democracy with receipts
pic.twitter.com/IS8LxvVi0S— Melissa Tate (@TheRightMelissa) February 15, 2025