Vice President JD Vance: “Germany’s entire defense is subsidized by the American taxpayer. There are thousands upon thousands of American troops in Germany today. Do you think that the American taxpayer is going to stand for that? If you get thrown in jail in Germany for posting a mean tweet, of course they’re not, right? So the point that I try to make to our European friends, and I think that they are friends. I believe that, I know President Trump does, if that friendship is based on shared values.

You do not have shared values if you’re jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don’t have shared values if you cancel elections because you don’t like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you’re so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up.”

Patel then vowed to end the two-tiered justice system the FBI has practiced for decades while vowing to be honest and transparent with the American people. “The FBI has a storied legacy — from the ‘G-Men’ to safeguarding our nation in the wake of 9/11. The American people deserve an FBI that is transparent, accountable, and committed to justice,” he stated. “The politicization of our justice system has eroded public trust — but that ends today.”

“My mission as Director is clear: let good cops be cops — and rebuild trust in the FBI,” he added. “Working alongside the dedicated men and women of the Bureau and our partners, we will rebuild an FBI the American people can be proud of.” Patel then sent a dire warning to those who seek to harm the American people. “And to those who seek to harm Americans — consider this your warning,” he said. “We will hunt you down in every corner of this planet.”

Vance proceeded to lay out five cold, hard facts regarding the Ukraine war that Ferguson conveniently ignored:

• Our Western European allies pursue disastrous domestic politics, such as open borders and censorship, while benefiting greatly from American generosity. This offends Americans who rightfully see these nations as freeloading off our country while not doing their part to defend their own backyard (including Ukraine).


• Russians retain huge advantages in manpower and weapons in Ukraine, and there is nothing the West can do to alter this reality no matter how much money is sent to the sinkhole.


• The United States has tremendous leverage over both Russia and Ukraine.


• The only way to end the conflict is by talking to the individuals responsible for starting it and continuing it.


• The Russia-Ukraine War has stressed multiple levels of American statecraft, from military stockpiles to sanctions. While the continued conflict is awful for Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of Europe, it is also terrible for the United States.

Try to imagine any other Vice-President giving this kind of eloquent America-first response to a foreign policy interventionist voice. By choosing Vance as his sidekick, Trump has ensured the MAGA movement will remain in good hands when he leaves office.

Mr Woodburn said: “There’s no question, it feels like quite a profound change and a paradigm shift. In terms of how that evolves – in terms of Europe’s thinking, NATO’s response and what the sense is of the new number to be aiming for – I think we’ll learn more in the coming couple of months.

“There’s lots of rhetoric but that has not, as yet, translated into a clear set of budgets that we will be looking for in order to make those plans that we need.” Meanwhile, building up enough mass to deter or fight a conflict with Russia or China in future would require greater use of cheaper, faster-to-build unmanned platforms such as drones, Mr Woodburn said.

What began as a professors’ party opposing eurozone bailout packages has morphed in just 12 years into an ever more radical force, feeding on anti-migrant sentiment and incorporating neo-Nazis into its ranks. “For the last decade the state has been violating law and order,” the AfD’s first chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel, said this week, referring to the flow of new arrivals at the border.

Turning to Merz’s party and its longtime leader, she added: “That began with the CDU and Angela Merkel and is continuing under the current government and anyone who points this out gets banished to the ‘rightwing’ corner.” Germany built its postwar identity – with the fundamental help of the Americans – around preventing parties like the AfD from gaining power.

But high-profile votes of confidence from Tesla tycoon Elon Musk and US vice-president JD Vance, who met the AfD leader in Munich last week, have only reinforced the impression that the wind is at the party’s back.

The AfD, which has been gaining momentum, is also riding high on a viral anthem. The iconic Italian DJ Gigi D’Agostino’s track “L’Amour Toujours” has been reworked with new lyrics championing the preservation of German culture. This song isn’t just a catchy beat — it’s become a rallying cry for those fed up with the status quo. It’s clear that the youth, the ones directly affected by the decisions made in the political arena, are vocal in their desire for a change that puts their country first.

DOGE’s investigation uncovered 3.5 million Social Security recipients listed as being over 140 years old, with some records showing ages as absurd as 360-369 years old. This isn’t a glitch — this is outright fraud. Even more shocking, over 25 million recipients are listed as over 100 years old, and their death fields are marked as “False” — meaning they’re still considered alive, even though they should have passed long ago.

To top it off, some individuals are listed as being over 150 years old, with two people absurdly marked at 240 and 360 years old. Are we really funding vampires with Social Security checks? If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.

The identities of the dead were not included in ABC’s report, but CNN reported that two of the four were brothers Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were 9 months old and 3 years old when Hamas savages captured them during the single deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

Nikki Haley, former United Nations ambassador and former South Carolina governor, was enraged with the network. “Shame on any media outlet that can’t call this what it is, murder,” she wrote. “Two innocent babies, their mother, and others did not simply ‘die’. They were kidnapped, murdered, and their bodies were held as bargaining chips by terrorists.”

“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilisation in a new direction? No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants,” Vance chided.

What was the ghastly Yank on about? The European Union hadn’t got where it is today by being democratic or listening to its citizens. It instructs member states to re-run plebiscites when they come up with the “wrong” answer, which is why millions of us backed Brexit.

JD Vance was highlighting a bitter historic irony. Western Europe which won the Cold War, positioning the defenders of democracy and free speech against tyrannical forces that censored dissidents and cancelled elections, was now cancelling elections, censoring dissidents and criminalising free speech. In short, it had become its former enemy.

Struggling to deal with the deadly side-effects of multiculturalism (a belief system which has largely replaced organised religion in Europe, although not in Poland and Hungary where there are no terrorist attacks (funny that!).

We are not so lost we no longer recognise the truth when we hear it. The vice-president spoke so eloquently and so passionately for so many. We are at a crossroads in European history: either our leaders will trust the opinions of the people and defend the Judeo-Christian values that forged our remarkable civilisation, or they will continue to silence and persecute those who object to the demise of those values, and they will insist we call it kindness.

The meeting sounded more constructive than the one the Europeans held among themselves in Paris a day earlier. The last two days have resembled a split-screen, with the Americans on one side getting down to the business at hand and the Europeans still trying to come up with a common position about the war on the other. The summit hastily organised by French president Emmanuel Macron was meant to be a unifying moment for the continent and an opportunity to make big decisions. But outside a family photo-op, where some of the delegations looked less than happy to be there, the suited heads-of-state appeared to leave with as many questions as they came with.

Yet if Europe is praying that Trump’s second administration will follow in the footsteps of his first, it’s making a potentially huge mistake. Trump 2.0 is less than a month old, but it doesn’t take a genius to grasp that European security – or more accurately, protecting Europe like a helpless child in a cruel, at times dystopian world – is not at the top of Trump’s list of priorities.

Senior US officials, from defence secretary Pete Hegseth and vice-president JD Vance to envoy Keith Kellogg, used the multi-day event in Munich last week to drill home a single point: the US can’t be everywhere and be expected to do everything for Europe just because it always has done. It was a stern message that rubbed polite society the wrong way but a message that had to be delivered regardless.

European governments will likely use the weeks and months ahead spending whatever diplomatic capital they have left to enlist Washington in any security arrangement for Ukraine. What they should do instead is heed the words coming out of the president’s mouth. Because on this issue, he means what he says.