Vice President JD Vance will participate in a Q&A at the Munich Leaders Meeting, organized by the Munich Security Conference (MSC), on Wednesday morning, Breitbart News can reveal.
Sources familiar with the event, which will take place at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, said that Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to the U.S. and former chairman of the MSC, will be conducting the Q&A.
Vance’s participation in the Q&A comes after his speech at the MSC in February, which ruffled feathers in Europe. Vance told world leaders that Europe’s biggest threat is “the threat from within,” going on to add:
For years we’ve been told 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 have to ask if we are holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves because I fundamentally think we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values, we must live them.
Now within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not. And thank God they lost the Cold War.
He further shared his worry that free speech throughout Europe “is in retreat.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius took issue with Vance’s comments.
“And I said, ‘No, this is not acceptable to accuse us of not being real Democrats. And I had to make that clear, as a representative of the German government here in Munich,” he told DW at the conference.
Supporters have argued that Vance was vindicated in his warning of attacks on democracy and liberty in Europe after populist French leader Marine Le Pen was prohibited from running for president of her country in March.
Moreover, last week, Germany designated right-wing sovereigntist Alternative for Germany (AfD), the second-largest political party in the country, as an extremist group.
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