00:00J.D. Vance last year basically dropped a giant anvil on the head of the entire audience at the Munich
00:05Conference.
00:06It was an abrasive, insulting, and altogether uncalled for type of speech.
00:11Let's be blunt here.
00:13So anything, by comparison, is going to be seen as, quote, more polite, more reassuring.
00:18And sure, on certain notes, Rubio seemed to say what a lot of Europeans were desperate to hear, right?
00:25Hitting the right notes, saying, well, we share common history and cultural heritage, talking about an unbreakable link between the
00:34U.S. and Europe since European settlers first arrived in the Americas centuries ago.
00:40All of that sounds good, right?
00:41So it's not a total rupture.
00:43But look, when you really, you don't have to go that deep into his speech.
00:47The same ideological notes, the same resonance with a lot of the MAGA themes, right?
00:53So basically bashing European energy policies for what he sees as appeasing the cult of climate.
01:01So the MAGA, anti-science, skepticism, anti-climate change, all of that rhetoric was there.
01:08Laying into, lashing into mass migration is raising the prospect of civilizational erasure, right?
01:15And words that have now become very common.
01:17And he actually referred to Western civilization, I think, 12 times in his speech.
01:21So once again, resonating with Donald Trump's themes.
01:24And sure, you could say, it's reassuring, Doug, isn't it, that he spoke of those shared historical and cultural heritage
01:30links?
01:30But let's translate that.
01:31Read between the lines.
01:33When he talks about shared heritage, he's talking about white Christian heritage.
01:38It's not a big leap to say he's not talking about non-whites.
01:41He's not talking about the great unwashed of mass migration and all of that.
01:46So sure, if you want to see the glasses half empty, I would say it's a stretch, but you can
01:50do it with Marco Rubio.
01:52But he's only an adult in the room so far.
01:56At the end of the day, he's speaking to the same audience that J.D. Vance was speaking to, and
02:00that is the audience of one.
02:01That's Donald Trump.
02:02And it's perhaps worth pointing out that both of them may be rivals for the Republican nomination for president in
02:092028.
02:10They have the MAGA hard line very much, you know, right there up front and center in their minds.
02:17Notable where else he's going, isn't it, Doug?
02:19Today, Hungary.
02:20Yeah, and I was saying earlier, it is perhaps even more important, if you really want to know what Marco
02:26Rubio's message is and where he stands, more important to watch where he went.
02:31Slovakia first and Hungary.
02:33Why are those two countries notable in choice for the Secretary of State coming out of a supposedly reassuring Munich
02:39conference?
02:39It's because they are the outliers, the so-called pariahs on the European stage.
02:44They have broken openly with the EU consensus, none more so perhaps than Viktor Orban, a man who Donald Trump
02:50openly admires, likes, and on whom – whose MAGA movement is modeled on many of Orban's themes.
02:57It's Orban, not the other way around, that has set the tone for a lot of what's happening in the
03:01MAGA culture wars.
03:02His lashing out at Europe, his skepticism of the so-called Western liberal order, his anti-woke rhetoric, his clampdown
03:10on academics, on media, on judiciary, on civil society in Hungary, very much resonating with what's happening in the U
03:17.S. right now.
03:18And that's who Marco Rubio is paying court to right now, consulting with is perhaps the better term, the more
03:24euphemistic term.
03:25They're talking about energy policy, they're talking about NATO commitments, but at the end of the day, we know where
03:31Viktor Orban stands on NATO.
03:33He has gone in the exact opposite direction from the EU every step of the way when it comes to
03:38Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine, embracing Vladimir Putin, opposing European sanctions on Russia, so on and so forth.
03:45So when you ask me the significance of Marco Rubio's visit to Budapest, Hungary, the significance is on the fact
03:51that he chose Budapest and Viktor Orban right now.
03:54Let's flip the political coin, Doug.
03:56Also at Munich, very much, quite evidently, were the Democrats.
04:01Yeah, the Democrats, basically their message is, this too shall pass.
04:05They were there very prominent at Munich.
04:08There were dozens, actually, of U.S. legislatures, lawmakers, and governors, including Gavin Newsom, the very outspoken California governor who
04:17has been very visible, not just on the domestic stage, but on the world stage recently.
04:21And he was in Munich, and on Friday, on the eve of Marco Rubio's address, Stuart, he was basically saying
04:26Donald Trump is not forever.
04:28Donald Trump will only be there three more years.
04:30And that's the message that we saw basically replicated wherever Democrats met Europeans.
04:35And there was a lot of closed-door meetings, the so-called reassurance meetings, saying, I know from where we
04:39stand today, it seems like Donald Trump is everything everywhere all at once.
04:44You just can't get away from him.
04:46You can't get enough of him.
04:46He's temporary.
04:47There is a time beyond Donald Trump.
04:49Now, the Europeans are cautious, perhaps understandably so.
04:53They don't even believe that a U.S. after Donald Trump is ever going to be able to rewind and
04:57go back to the way it was before Trump.
04:59So they're perhaps understandably wary.
05:02But the Democrats want to say, we hear your concerns.
05:05We still have a vision of a very different type of America.
05:08And we haven't lost hope that there's at least a way to return to some sort of way it was
05:13before, when we actually were allies for 80 years after the war and we all got along pretty well.
05:20Whether that's a pie-in-the-sky message right now, only time will tell.
05:23But it was a very clear run from the Democrats.
05:25I'll note one last thing, Stuart.
05:26Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, very progressive, left-leaning congresswoman from New York.
05:34She was there and she made the message that it's the wealth inequality, social and wealth income gaps and disparities,
05:42which breed rising authoritarianism, authoritarian forms of government, such as what we're seeing in the U.S., but not just
05:48in the U.S.
05:49And she was saying, when you tackle those issues, you tackle that wealth gap, you try to close it, you
05:54have a lesser chance of seeing the types of people such as Donald Trump's rising to power on the backs
06:01of anger and grievance in their electorates.
06:04Thanks very much, Doug Herbert, international votes commentator here on France 24.
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