Over the weekend, I published a post on X that has since garnered over 10 million views.
I credit its wild popularity not with any writing prowess on my part, but the subject matter - that JD Vance speech.
The US Vice President blew up the internet on Friday when he took to the stage at the illustrious Munich Security Conference and scolded hundreds of Europe's self-assured defence experts.
As I intimated in my post, the last time a room of elites copped such a hiding was when comedian Ricky Gervais took the woke hypocrites of Hollywood to the cleaners at the 2020 Golden Globes.
What did Vance say to so upset the ruling class - and so delight the everyday punter?
Europe is hardly worth defending, Vance declared, if it continues on its present slide into the autocratic abyss.
That's no small accusation, but Vance came with receipts: Eurocrats annulling a Romanian election whose result they didn't like; a German recently raided for "anti-feminist" posts; a Swedish activist convicted for Quran burnings; a British veteran fined for silent prayer near an abortion clinic - his list went on.
Vance's greatest gripe? Leaders across the European continent ignoring the will of voters on the hot topic of mass migration.
Tragically proving his point, just a day earlier in the very city where Vance gave his speech, 37 Germans had been mown down by an Afghan jihadi, and a mother and daughter killed.
"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," Vance said. "Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't."
The greatest threat to Europe, Vance announced, is not external armies, but the betrayal of these most fundamental values by the men and women entrusted to lead Europe's people.
Hear, hear!
I hope you like his speech as much as I did.
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JD Vance's Munich speech was pure fire xD83DxDD25
— Kurt Mahlburg (@k_mahlburg) February 15, 2025
Elites haven't copped such a hiding since Ricky Gervais embarrassed Hollywood.
I counted no less than 30 quotable quotes from Vance's speech. Here they are: pic.twitter.com/5ipA1NEfFK
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