of the United States Mr JD van who was here last year as Senator and we are very happy that he has come back to Munich and um we are very much looking forward um to his speech please welcome vice president JD van [Music] [Applause] well thank you and uh thanks to all the uh the gathered delegates and luminaries and media professionals and uh thank thanks especially to the host of the Munich security conference uh for being able to to put on such an incredible event we're of course thrilled to be here we're happy to be
here and you know one of the things that I wanted to to talk about today is of course our shared values and you know it's it's great to be back in as as you heard earlier I was here last year as United States Senator I saw uh foreign minister excuse me foreign secretary David Lamy and joke that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now but now it's time uh for all of our countries for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples
to use it wisely to improve their lives and I want to say that you know I was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours and I've been so impressed by the hospitality of the people even of course as they're reeling from yesterday's horrendous attack and the first time I was ever in Munich was with was with my wife actually who's here with me today um on a personal trip and I've always loved the city of Munich and I've always loved its people and
I just want to say that we're very moved and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful Community where thinking about you we're praying for you and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come [Applause] now I hope that's not the last bit of Applause that I get but we We Gather at at this conference of course to discuss security and normally we mean threats to our external security I see M many great military leaders gathered here today but while the
Trump Administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine and we also believe that it's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense the threat that I worry the most about VAV Europe is not Russia it's not China it's not any other external actor and what I worry about is the threat from within The Retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values values shared with the United States of America now
I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annuled an entire election he warned that if things don't go to plan the very same thing could happen in Germany too now these Cavalier statements are shocking to American ears for years we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared Democratic Values everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is build as a defense of democracy but when we see European courts cancelling elections and Senior officials threatening to
cancel others we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard and I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that 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 dissident that closed churches that cancelled 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 the freedom to surprise to make mistakes to invent to build as it turns out you can't mandate Innovation or creativity just as you can't force people what to think what to feel or what to believe and we believe those things are certainly connected and unfortunately when I look at Europe today it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the cold Wars winners I Look to Brussels where EU commiss 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 quote hateful content or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of quote combating misogyny on the internet a day of action I Look to Sweden where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quan burnings that resulted in his friend's murder and as the judge in his case chillingly noted Sweden's laws to supposedly Protect free expression do not in fact Grant and I'm quoting a free
pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief and perhaps most concerningly I Look to our very dear friends the United Kingdom where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic Liberties of religious Britain in particular in the crosshairs a little over two years ago the British government charged Adam Smith Connor a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran with the the heinous crime of standing 50 m from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes not obstructing anyone not interacting with anyone just silently praying on his
own after British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for Adam replied simply it was on behalf of The Unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before now the officers were moved Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law which criminalized silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility he was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution now I wish I could say that this was a fluke a one-off
crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person but no 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 naturally the government urged readers to report any fellow citizen suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe free speech I fear is in Retreat and in the interest of Comedy My Friends but also in the interest of truth I will admit
that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe but from within my own country where the prior Administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation misinformation like for example the idea that Corona virus had likely leaked from leaked from a laboratory in China our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth so I come here today not just with an observation but with an offer and just as the Biden Administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking
their minds so the Trump Administration will do precisely the opposite and I hope that we can work together on that in Washington there is 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 agree or [Applause] disagree now we're at the point of course that the the situation has gotten so bad that this December R Romania straight up cancelled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous
pressure from its Continental neighbors 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 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, of digital advertising from a foreign country then it wasn't very strong to begin with [Applause] now the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially
less brittle than many people apparently fear and I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still which of course brings us back to Munich where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conf conversations now again we don't have to agree with everything or anything that people say but when people represent when political leaders represent an important constituency it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them now to many
of us on the other side of the Atlantic it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet ER words like misinformation and disinformation who simply don't like the idea that somebody with an alternative Viewpoint might Express a different opinion or God forbid vote a different way or even worse win an election now this is a security conference and I'm sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you would tend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new Target and that's great because as
president Trump has made abundantly clear he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent we don't think you hear this term burdens sharing but we think it's an important part of being in a shared Alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger 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 I've heard
a lot already in my conversations and I've had many many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room I've heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from and of course that's important but what has seemed a little bit less clear to me and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe is what exactly it is that you're defending yourselves for what is the positive Vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important and I believe deeply that there is no security if you afraid
of the voices the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people Europe faces many challenges but the crisis this continent faces right now the crisis I believe we all face together is one of our own making if you're running in fear of your own voters there is nothing America can do for you nor for that matter is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected president Trump you need Democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years have we learned nothing that thin mandates produce
unstable results but there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens if you're going to enjoy competitive economies if you're going to enjoy affordable energy and secure Supply chains then you need mandates to govern because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things 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 whether that's the leader
of the opposition a humble Christian praying in her own home or a journalist trying to report the news nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society and of all the pressings challenges that the Nations represented here face I believe there is nothing more urgent than Mass migration today almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad that is of course an all-time high it's a similar number by the way in the United un States also an all-time
high the number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-eu countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone and of course it's gotten much higher since and we know the situation it didn't materialize 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 we saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very City and of course I can't bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a a beautiful winter day in
Munich ruined our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them but why did this happen in the first place it's a terrible story but it's one we've heard way too many times in Europe and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well an asylum Seeker often a young man in his mid 20s already known to police Rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community how many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a New Direction no voter on this
continent went to The Ballot Box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants 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 promis to put an end to out ofc control migration now I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns but you don't have to agree with me I just think that people care about their homes they care about their dreams they care about their safety and their
capacity to provide for themselves and their children and they're smart I think this is one of the most important things I've learned in my brief time in politics contrary to what you might hear a couple mountains over in Davos the citizens of all of our Nations don't generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy and it's hardly surprising that they don't want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders and it is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at The Ballot Box I believe
that dismissing people dismissing their concerns or worse yet shutting down media shutting down elections or shutting PE people out of the political process protects nothing in fact it is the most Surefire way to destroy democracy and speaking up and expressing opinions isn't election interference even when people Express views outside your own country and even when those people are very influential and trust me I say this with all humor if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta thunberg scolding you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk but what German democracy 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 or Unworthy of even being considered democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters there's no room for firewalls you either uphold the principle or you don't Europeans the people have a voice European leaders have a choice and my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future you can Embrace what your people tell you even when it's surprising even when you don't agree
and if you do so you can face the future with certainty and with confidence knowing that the nation stands behind each of you and that to me is the great magic of democracy it's not in these Stone buildings or beautiful hotels it's not even in the great institutions that we have built together as a shared Society to believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice and if we refuse to listen to that voice even our most successful fights will secure very little as Pope John Paul II
in my view one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other once said do not be afraid we shouldn't be afraid of our people even when they express views that disagree with their leadership thank you all good luck to all of you you God bless you [Applause]
