‘What Happened With That?’ Fox Anchor Asks JD Vance Why Marco Rubio’s Europe Speech Went So Much Better Than His

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum asked Vice President JD Vance why his speech at the Munich Security Conference went so much more poorly than the recent talk given by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to foreign leaders.

Vance joined Fox News’ The Story on Tuesday where MacCallum brought up his 2025 Munich Security Conference speech and the fact that a similar speech given by Rubio this year seemed to go over much better. MacCallum noted Vance inspired “long faces” among European leaders with his talk of free speech, borders, and “defending yourselves for change,” while Rubio was met with applause.

Rubio also spoke about border security and Europe forking over more for its “security,” themes Vance hit on.

“They were applauding and they thought it was great. So what happened with that? Why is that the outcome? Why is that the outcome?” MacCallum asked.

“I heard somebody say that I was the bad cop so that Marco could be a good cop,” Vance joked, calling Rubio’s talk a “great speech.”

Check out the exchange below:

MARTHA MACCALLUM: So let’s look at Europe for a moment. A lot of focus on the Munich Security Conference, and last year you gave a very strong speech there that got a lot reaction. There were a lot long faces actually in the crowd from the European leaders. You talked to them about borders, about free speech, about defending yourselves for a change in Europe. Marco Rubio, secretary of state, was there, gave a speech that had a lot of similar underpinnings to it, but they were applauding and they thought it was great. So what happened with that? Why is that the outcome? Why is that the outcome?

JD VANCE: Well, I heard somebody say that I was the bad cop so that Marco could be a good cop. I mean, he gave a great speech, but he drove home, I think, a very important point that the Europeans have largely forgotten or at least had largely forgotten over the past year is that the reason why the president or Marco or me talk about borders, the reason why we talk about them spending more on their own security, the reasons that we talk about them more becoming a vibrant economy again is that we want Europe to thrive and we want Europe to succeed. The problem that we have with Europe is not that we don’t like Europe, even though you hear that from the European press, it’s not that that we don’t respect our allies, it’s that they are doing a lot of things to sabotage themselves. We would like that to stop. We’d like them to be an ally in the true sense of the word. And I think that’s what Marco’s speech very, very ably delivered. It was a great speech. I’d encourage people to watch it because unlike most of these speeches, which you hear a lot slogans and a lot of cliches, he actually outlined a very smart view of American foreign policy and it’s the foreign policy we’ve been pursuing for about a year and a month.

MACCALLUM: Yeah, I mean, my sense was that they’re starting to come around from when you gave that speech and now they hear Marco Rubio’s speech, it almost seems like they feel that they also want Europe to be what it once was.

VANCE: I think that’s true. Some of them are coming around. Some of them still the message is falling on deaf ears. I think it’s a mixture, but I do think that we’ve made a lot of progress and look if you just go back to one of the critical things the president said when we came in is we wanted Europe to spend more on its own security that’s definitely happening. He also said he wanted Europe to protect its borders more to actually maintain its civilizational coherence that’s happening a little bit and he also said that he wanted Europe to take free speech more seriously and that’s also happening a So, we’ve made a lot of progress, but frankly, we want our European allies to do a lot better. We want them to do better for their own sake, but also because we think they can be better partners in the process.

Watch above via Fox News.

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