‘You lied to the world’: JD Vance is slammed by a Democratic Representative over ‘free speech’ comments
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) took Vice President JD Vance to task for his hypocrisy in his nonsensical, one-man show dressed as a free speech crusade in Munich.
“You lied to the world in Munich,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X, directly at the new veep. Vance’s recent performance at the Munich Security Conference revealed an alarming truth about this administration’s relationship with free speech—once you start telling people you’re the big bad boss, you have to keep telling the lie even to people who don’t believe it, even at the risk of embarrassment. Rather than address critical security concerns, Vance Super Dave-launched into what he claimed was the real threat: “The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”
The speech proved an intersectional trainwreck in all directions. As Reuters reported, “people appeared stunned and did not applaud” as Vance lectured European allies about their supposed censorship, as if provided the text by a certain Russian president. Even his attempted joke about how “if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk” fell flatter than an IHOP triple-stack in the shocked silence.
When challenged about his administration’s own attacks on press freedom, Vance responded with characteristic condescension. “Yes dummy,” he tweeted at journalist Mehdi Hasan. “I think there’s a difference between not giving a reporter a seat in the WH press briefing room and jailing people for dissenting views.”
This administration’s hypocrisy runs deep. While Vance preaches about European overreach, his government has barred Associated Press reporters from Air Force One for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Meanwhile, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has threatened Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with criminal investigation for educating constituents about their constitutional rights, asking ominously on Fox News, “Is she crossing the line? So, I’m working with the Department of Justice and finding out.”
Nathalie Tocci, director of Istituto Affari Internazionali think tank, cut to the black heart of Vance’s bad faith agenda: “Vance’s attack on European democracy in Munich, perversely twisting the language of democracy itself should leave no doubt whatsoever that the aim of this administration is to destroy the EU and its liberal democracies.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius responded with equal clarity: “If I understood him correctly, he is comparing parts of Europe with authoritarian regimes. This is not acceptable.”
The vice president’s selective outrage proves particularly galling when examining his dismissal of Russian election interference in Romania. “If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country,” Vance lectured, “then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.” This deliberately minimizes what Romanian officials described as “aggressive hybrid Russian attacks” backed by classified intelligence reports.
Rather than address urgent matters like Ukraine’s defense needs or NATO strategy, Vance chose to place America’s allies on coals while cozying up to far-right figures like Germany’s Alice Weidel. As one U.S. commentator noted to the BBC, “That was all for U.S. domestic consumption.” In other words, it was a dog-and-pony show for Trump’s base to project some semblance of strength abroad.
The vice president positions himself as a defender of free expression while his administration actively works to silence dissent. When Ocasio-Cortez pointed out this hypocrisy, she cut to the core truth: “You lied to the world in Munich. If this administration believed in free speech as you claimed, its leaders wouldn’t be threatening members of Congress with criminal investigations for educating the public of their Constitutional rights.”
Vance’s Munich cringe will likely be remembered not as a defense of democratic principles, as he claims, but as an incredible case study in diplomatic malpractice. The screed didn’t project strength; it coded the U.S. as a failing state. It demonstrated how quickly America’s role as a global leader can be compromised when its representatives choose partisan posturing over everything reasonable.
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