Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) criticized Vice President Vance for “lecturing” European allies about “political tolerance” during a speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
At the conference, Vance warned European leaders of a “the threat from within,” citing mass migration and censorship in the region.
“While the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine … the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor,” he continued. “What I worry about is the threat from within.
In a Friday interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown, as highlighted by Mediaite, Connolly slammed Vance, calling out President Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to dismantle some federal agencies, reduce the government workforce and purge FBI staff.
“Imagine lecturing Europeans about being afraid of their own electorate when it is Trump and Elon Musk who are firing FBI agents because they dared to do their duty, who are having loyalty test at the National Security Council, who are firing tens of thousands of federal employees because they consider them part of the deep State and can’t be trusted,” the lawmaker said.
“You’re going to lecture others about political tolerance of free speech?” Connolly continued. “That’s a bit much.”
At the Munich conference, Vance added that “free speech” is diminishing throughout the region.
“To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind Soviet-era 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,” Vance said.
He also referred to an incident in Munich a day earlier when a migrant drove a car into a crowd as an instance of the consequences of mass migration.
“No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants,” Vance said.
Vance met with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on the sidelines of the conference, but did not touch on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict in his official speech, prompting disappointment from another lawmaker.
“I didn’t get the sense he came today to talk about Ukraine which is at the top of everybody’s list here but rather to comment on things like freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and those sorts of shared values between Europe and the United States,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview, as reported by Politico.
