Vice President JD Vance got a standing ovation at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday for a speech he actually gave a week earlier in Munich, Germany, about the importance of pushing back against government censorship.
Moderator Mercedes Schlapp, the former White House Director of Strategic Communications, mentioned the speech, prompting applause from the audience. “I think they really liked it,” she said.
“I’m glad you guys liked it, not everybody liked it,” Vance said, referencing the outcry from liberals in the United States and abroad who had accused him of driving a wedge between the United States and its allies. “You guys liked it, not everybody liked it.”
What followed then was a standing ovation:
JD Vance gets a standing ovation at CPAC for his epic Munich speech last week. pic.twitter.com/T36nFp9P9s
— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) February 20, 2025
As the audience members got to their feet, Vance smiled and thanked them, adding, “I’ll take a standing ovation for a speech I already gave. It’s like two for the price of one.”
“Here’s your speech, just say it again,” Schlapp joked.
Vance’s speech warned Europeans of a threat within their own borders — one posed by the very governments they represented.
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“If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” he told European leaders while citing examples of efforts to suppress the political expressions of their own people.
Referencing the European nations that had been on the winning side during the Cold War, Vance added, “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. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty.”
“What no democracy — American, German, or European — will survive, is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief, are invalid and unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls,” he concluded.
