On Feb. 14, 2025, newly-inaugurated Vice President JD Vance made his first official trip to Europe to attend the annual Munich Security Conference. Instead of the usual warm embrace and pledge of continued cooperation, Vance delivered a scathing indictment of their policies and their principles.
As the New York Times reported at the time, his speech “stunned and silenced [the] hundreds of attendees” and “offered…a preview” of what would be the administration’s disdainful attitude toward the “trans-Atlantic relationship.” Instead of focusing on the threats posed by China and Russia, Vance urged Europeans to focus on what he called “the threat from within,” a variation of “the enemy within,” a phrase used by Donald Trump to describe his domestic political opponents. The term carried an especially chilling, historical weight at a conference held in Germany; Nazis had used it in their aggressive propaganda campaign against Jews, Communists and others the government wanted to demonize.
