Vance eviscerates 'Soviet'-style European censorship

I have always had some concerns about JD Vance, but I have always given him credit for being an amazingly eloquent speaker.  

To that point, while speaking at a Munich conference, he delivered again, giving a speech that eviscerated European leadership.  

Vance Speaks 

Vance did what few others have the guts to do, and that is call out European leadership to their face. Vance stated, "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." 

He continued, "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." 

Then he really went for the throat, adding, "You can believe it's wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn't very strong to begin with." 

Rubio Defends Speech 

The media went ballistic after the speech, once again associating this administration with the Nazis.  

CBS host Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation" said this accomplished nothing but “irritating our allies.” Well, after all they said about Trump’s first administration, maybe they need to be nudged just a little bit.  

After Brennan stated, "Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide," Rubio went off, stating, "Well, I have to disagree with you. No - I have, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews." 

He concluded, "There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were the sole and only party that governed that country. So that's not an accurate reflection of history." 

European Leadership Panicking 

Those comments by Vance and statements by Trump have created a wave of panic among European leaders, with French President Macron reportedly calling for a conference this week.  

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski stated that he was "very glad that President Macron has called our leaders to Paris.” 

The topic of discussion is going to be the challenges presented to these countries with a Trump administration.  

To me, this is a good thing after seeing our allies push Biden around for the last four years. Trump knows he has the big stick in the room, and he is not afraid to swing it. Every one of these nations takes money from the United States, so if they don’t like what Trump is doing, perhaps Congress just needs to cut them off until they come around.