Dear JD Vance, your recent speech at the Munich Security Conference on 14th February 2025 concerns me, and you made several points I would like to address individually.
Your speech is full of lies, and has a profoundly unethical undertone. Frankly, I am already deeply disappointed with how Elon Musk has been behaving in the past few years, and this is my first impression of you. Not a positive one, for sure!
Romanian elections
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. - JD Vance
Mr. Vance, it appears you are unaware of why this happened, so I’m happy to explain. As The Conversation [archived version] reports:
The Romanian constitutional court annulled the country’s presidential election on December 6.
Romania’s current president, Klaus Iohannis, declassified five intelligence files related to the campaign investigation. One document indicated that 25,000 pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts became highly active two weeks before the first-round vote. Nearly 800 of these accounts had been created in 2016 and remained largely dormant until the election.
Romanian law requires that all electoral campaign expenditures be declared. However, Georgescu officially declared zero campaign expenses and when presented with the evidence he upheld this claim, insisting he does not know Peșchir.
Of relevance from these excerpts, please note that this order was given by the Romanian Constitutional Court.
I’m sure you agree that the Constitution is the country’s most important legal document. Many European nations have a dedicated court tasked with interpreting and defending the Constitution, operating independently of the legislative, executive, and ordinary judicial branches. While annulling an election is certainly a worrisome and unprecedented moment in Romanian history, there was complete rigour and due process from start to finish.
In this case, the Romanian Constitutional Court had evidence of election interference through TikTok, the same app Donald Trump wanted to ban a little over 4 years ago [archived version]. This was, of course, paused for 75 days [archived version] soon after Donald Trump took office in 2025 for reasons nobody can understand.
Mr. Vance, I understand you might not be familiar with what due process looks like, but I feel it necessary to remind you of the several lawsuits [archived version] that were started as a result of Donald Trump losing the election, and all of them ended up dismissed. Regrettably, your party did it again during the 2024 elections [archived version], repeating the same playbook and claiming election fraud even before the results were in. In these examples, the lies promoted by Donald Trump and his team are not due process, while dismissing the baseless accusations and unmerited lawsuits constitute legal rigour and due process.
May I suggest you learn about European politics and democracy before attempting to educate Romanians on when and how an election can be annulled, Mr. Vance?
German elections and AfD
He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too. - JD Vance
Indeed, Mr. Vance; In 2024, a German court stated AfD is suspected of extremism [archived version]. Again - this is a court, not a political prosecution. Given your political affiliations, it’s understandable that you disagree with this German court, but the undertone of your sentence seems to imply that Europe annulls elections because citizens “vote wrong”.
AfD might very well be the biggest test of German democracy since Adolf Hitler took power. After World War II, Europe, along with US, went to great extents to safeguard and protect European democracies and avoid something like this repeating. The EU was also created to bridge and tie European economies so that a future German invasion would also economically hurt the aggressors. Their ties to nazism are of great concern [archived version]. Mr. Vance, your country fought and defeated the nazis. How do you come to terms with the fact that AfD and their nazi associations have such a strong support from Elon Musk, one of the most influential and powerful men in America right now?
You mention democracy, listening to the people, and free speech. But conveniently seem to forget that includes the right to protest. And Germans have been protesting against AfD in the thousands. Is this not democracy, Mr. Vance? Is this not free speech? Or are you afraid of protesters?
Democratic values
We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them. - JD Vance
I agree. Defending democracy is extremely important, and that’s why I find it concerning that a country with such a poor democratic record is pretending to educate us Europeans.
The Global Change Data Lab ranks American democracy as weaker than that of Germany, the UK, and Canada.
I invite you to take notes from Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, France, or the Netherlands, all with higher scores and better respected democratic institutions compared to the United States of America.
Social media and radicalisation
I look to Brussels, where EU Commission commissars warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest: the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content’. - JD Vance
I agree; this is of great concern. And so does the DoJ. The American National Institute of Justice and the US Department of Justice sponsored a paper titled The role of the Internet and social media on radicalisation [archived version].
Is this what you refer to when you stated the greatest threat to Europe “comes from within”? Or would you, instead, have Europe run a hate-speech-first platform like what Elon Musk has done for America [archived version]?
Nevertheless, Donald Trump is very quick to call things “fake news”. Does that not concern you?
Praying is illegal
This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. - JD Vance
I’m not even going to entertain this statement, Mr. Vance. You’re a liar [archived version]. This is highly unethical behaviour coming from a Vice President who, a few minutes ago, was trying to lecture the entire European Union on democracy. Do better.
Free speech is under attack
Free speech, I fear, is in retreat - JD Vance
Indeed! We learn from our mistakes, JD Vance. Fortunately, I’ve already written about this: Free speech is not a noble goal to pursue.
My opinion on the matter is clear, but Mr. Vance, did you know that in 2017, several States in USA were considering criminalising protesting [archived version]?
Given this background, and additionally considering Donald Trump’s track record on attacking and undermining free speech [archived version], you seeming to imply that free speech is under attack in Europe is ironic.
What does Europe stand for?
But let me also ask you, how will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don’t know what it is that we are defending in the first place? […] What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important? - JD Vance
Mr. Vance, I must reject in the strongest possible terms the implication that we don’t know what we’re defending or what we want in Europe. You might not know, because you’re not European. But we certainly know very well what we’re defending.
In Europe we stand for:
- Equality across genders and sexual orientations
- Collective decision-making including public transit, healthcare, world-leading education
- Law and order with strong democratic institutions
- Shared prosperity: the ones with the most can help the ones who have the least - at all levels
- Human rights
- Worker rights
- Fighting foreign interference, including Russia, China, and the United States of America
- Renewable energy and sustainability
- Strong national cultures and traditions enriching each other
- Accessibility and human dignity
Let me repeat the question back to you: what does the United States stand for? What does the new Trump term mean for ordinary Americans? Will you lower their grocery bills? Will housing and healthcare soon become affordable? Or is this only about lining the pockets of the ultra-rich?
America can’t help you
If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. - JD Vance
Rest assured, Mr. Vance, there is nothing America can or has to do for Europe. We are not afraid of “our own voters”, although you might be afraid of terrifying terms like “woke”, “LGBTQ+”, or perhaps “women’s rights”. Indeed, we hold a sincere belief that intrinsically undemocratic forces, like AfD in Germany, cannot be a part of a free, fair, and just democratic system. Trust me, Europeans, especially Germans, know all too well what this means. You Americans have more experience organising foreign coup d’états, not so much experiencing it yourselves, especially in the face of the failed Capitol attempt.
Putting your opponents in jail
And of course, we know that very well. In America, you cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail. - JD Vance
Indeed, the American way to win elections is more about spending billions of dollars in election campaigns and then funding propaganda machines to steer voting intention one way or the other. But I hope you didn’t forget about the times when America did incarcerate communists, like when members of the Communist Party of USA were found guilty under the Smith Act [archived version]. Then again, because of your personal biases, you may still agree that this was the correct thing to do, which may not sound hypocritical to anyone who didn’t know about the Smith Act, but I don’t want to hear anymore how prosecuting and incarcerating dissidents weakens democratic institutions from a country that does the same thing.
Mass migration
And of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. […] And we know the situation. It didn’t materialise in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade. - JD Vance
Mr. Vance, do you know where these people come from? Countries like Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Algeria, and Syria.
What do these countries have in common? They’ve all gone through wars and horrible tragedies in these last 20 years. In some cases, it was America and NATO allies bombing and destroying homes in the name of democracy.
Where do you suppose these people can go once their towns have been destroyed, their families often missing members, and they have no job, no education, and no opportunities in life? Should we just leave them to starve and die in their home countries? I guess the answer is a very clear and resounding yes given Trump wants to eliminate USAID [archived version].
Brexit
But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit, and agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. - JD Vance
Your weakest argument yet, Mr. Vance. Brexit has been a catastrophe. The British economy is the weakest it’s been in decades, the concerns of the people regarding trade and prices haven’t been alleviated, and most remarkably of all, immigration has shot up dramatically, mostly from non-EU immigrants [archived version], which are generally culturally less aligned than immigrants coming from the European continent, causing further problems.
