Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni came to Vice President JD Vance’s defense on Saturday, blasting the “elites” who were outraged by Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference last week.
Defending Free Speech and Identity
She denounced the “American liberal leftism” that she said was being replicated in Europe, and said Vance was right in his speech about the greater threat to the continent.
“Vice President Vance was discussing something deeper: identity, democracy, freedom of speech,” the far right leader said during her virtual speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
Challenging Europe’s Status Quo
Vance made waves in Munich with his “America First” address that left European leaders stunned, and without the guidance they had hoped for on the U.S.’s approach to negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
Now, Meloni is echoing Vance and President Donald Trump’s talking points — saying Europe has been “sacrificed on the altar of wokeness, bureaucracy and mercantilism.”
Call for European Strength
“If those who were outraged had showed the same pride when Europe lost its strategic autonomy, tying its economy to autocratic regimes, or when European borders and our way of life were threatened by mass illegal migration, now we would live in a stronger Europe,” Meloni said.
