German Official Melts Down After JD Vance Humiliates European Leaders

The truth hurts.

That’s what many of the attendees at the Munich Security Conference found out on Friday, after U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance condemned a number of the attending European countries for speech crackdowns and criticism of American social media platforms allowing free speech.

After the address — in which Vance noted that “if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk” — Germany’s defense minister took to the stage to inform America that he was Not Happy™.

“This democracy was just called into question by the U.S. Vice President, not just the German democracy but that of Europe as a whole,” Boris Pistorius said during his address.

“If I understand him correctly he compares the condition of Europe with what prevails in some authoritarian regimes … this is not acceptable. This is not the Europe where I live,” he added.

JUST IN: German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius starts whining about JD Vance’s speech, says it was “not acceptable.”

Looks like Vance’s speech was a success.

The whining came after Vance ripped European nations for criminalizing free speech and acting like tyrants.

“If I… pic.twitter.com/zM9DBo7V3M

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 14, 2025

Unfortunately, it kind of is, which is why the speech struck a nerve.

Pistorius’ remarks came at the end of a speech where Vance noted numerous totalitarian measures taken by European nations in relation to social media, from arresting people for sharing unpopular opinions to supporting the overturning of election results in Romania on the basis of an alleged Russian online spending campaign.

In his speech, Vance said that leaders in Europe are “hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation” to quash dissent.

He also offered a rebuke to those who complained about Musk’s opinions on politics in the United Kingdom and Germany.

“Expressing opinions isn’t election interference, even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential,” Vance said, not-so-subtly invoking Musk.

He then invoked him directly: “And trust me, I say this with all humor, if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”

Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference:

“If the American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunburg scolding, you can survive a few months of Elon Musk.” pic.twitter.com/LAc9X3KRda

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 14, 2025

As for Romania — where the entire election was annulled based on a surprise result where an independent populist candidate who polled in the low single-digits until the final weeks of the campaign led the first round of balloting and set up a surprise run-off which did not include the two largest establishment parties in the European Union country, all based on allegations of low-level Russian spending to prop up the independent populist on social media — Vance noted the unusual glee with which this disregard for democracy was met by the E.U.

“I was struck that a former European Commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election,” Vance said.

“Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections, but I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective,” he added.

“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.”

This isn’t exactly incorrect — Romania’s first post-communist leader, Ion Iliescu, has been facing various charges that began in 2019 for his role in the 1989 uprising that led to overthrow of the unspeakably evil Nicolae Ceausescu and faces a new round of charges for a crackdown on protests in 1990, which, if nothing else, speaks to the general stability of the goings-on in Bucharest — but the European Union is supposed to be the bulwark against this kind of slide into kakistocracy, not its cheerleader.

Which is also what occasioned the meltdown, since Vance told the audience that “shutting down” viewpoints they disagree with “is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.”

“Unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners,” Vance said.

And, he added, don’t expect help from Washington when it comes to interfering with viewpoints on social media.

“Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds … the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite,” he said.

“In Washington, there’s a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square of agree or disagree.”

Pistorius can call this “not acceptable” all that he wishes. It’s worth noting that this probably is part of a last-minute scare campaign because the party that currently controls Germany probably won’t be controlling it much longer; according to DPA International, in elections scheduled for later this month, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party continues to run a distant third behind the mainstream conservative Christian Democrats and the populist/conservative Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

As if to make a finer point on it, the AfD and its left-wing populist counterpart, the BSW, were banned from the conference that Vance gave the speech at, according to Politico, and Germany’s parliamentarians are debating whether to ban the AfD, period, full stop.

So, yeah, turns out that is the Europe in which you live, Mr. Pistorius. At the very least, if you don’t annul those election results like they did in Romania, it’ll likely be the last time you’ll have to throw a hissy fit like this again for a while.

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