Returning from his first international trip as vice president, Vance touted several of the Trump administration’s actions in the month since assuming the White House, addressed Republican’s plans for reconciliation, and championed Trump as a leader several times during his on-stage interview with CPAC host Mercedes Schlapp. 

“The president keeps us on a pretty breakneck pace. He always asks, What have we done today? What are we going to do tomorrow? What we’re going to do next week, because I think he realizes this is a special moment in time,” Vance said during his first few minutes on the stage.

Vance has maintained a busy schedule since being sworn in as vice president one month ago, crisscrossing the country to visit disaster sites and making frequent trips to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican lawmakers as he looks to help usher President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda through. 

The vice president embarked on a trip to Germany last week to attend the Munich Security Conference, where he lambasted European allies over free speech abuses and religious liberty concerns during his remarks. 

“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,” Vance said. “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. And I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.” 

Vance reiterated his remarks onstage at CPAC, saying, “You’ve got to give the populations of the world the opportunity to speak up and say, ‘No more of this BS.’ We want order. We want sovereignty. We want to be able to speak our own mind in our own country.”

The former Ohio senator also took shots at former President Joe Biden, saying his administration “did more to destroy free speech, not just in the United States, but also in Europe and any administration in American history.”

Vance laid out three core agenda items of Trump’s administration later in his remarks, saying that Trump has tried to “recognize that we have a historical mandate on a few issues,” listing securing the southern border, growing the economy, and reducing government spending as top priorities. 

“I think the third thing that he’s tried to do, of course, with the help of Elon and all the great folks at DOGE, is ask, what are we doing with all of the American taxpayer’s money, and why are we wasting so much of it on garbage the American people either aren’t aware that we’re spending it on or don’t want to be spending it on in the first place,” Vance said. 

Ahead of the vice president taking the stage, CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp and wife Mercedes announced that entrepreneur Elon Musk would be attending the convention. The announcement comes as Trump has thrown Musk, the chairman of the Department of Government Efficiency, further into the spotlight as his chief ally. 

It also comes after the president declined to outright endorse Vance as his successor during an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier as the vice president was preparing to speak at the AI summit in Paris, with Trump saying it was “too early” to do so.

“I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far, I think he’s doing a fantastic job. It’s too early. We’re just starting,” the president said.

Two days later, ahead of Vance’s speech in Munich, Trump invited Musk to the Oval Office as he threw his support behind DOGE’s investigation into alleged fraud and waste at the Internal Revenue Service.

While in the Oval Office, Musk fielded questions from reporters while his son sat on his shoulders and Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk. Accusations of Musk being a “shadow” president have risen throughout the first month of Trump’s second term. 

Despite public speculation over the dynamics between Trump and Musk, Vance continued to champion the president’s “cultural message” during his appearance at the convention. He had a message specifically to young men about masculinity.

“Our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge,” Vance said. “… Don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends, or because you’re competitive.”

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When asked by Mercedes Schlapp who was funnier, him or Trump, Vance yielded the honorific to the president.

“​​He’s got the best sense of humor of any American political figure,” Vance said. “But I think this is why young men, in particular, are so they’re so inspired by President Trump is because he doesn’t allow the media to tell him he can’t make a joke or he can’t have an original thought.”