JD Vance, at CPAC, Defends His Munich Speech and Trump’s Policy Barrage

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday offered a defense of the frenetic first month of President Trump’s second term, using an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference to reinforce the two men’s shared views on foreign policy in particular.

Mr. Vance, fresh off a speech in Munich that provoked deep concern in Europe over his embrace of a far-right German political party, said that he believed the future of America’s relationships with European allies would depend on whether they embrace right-wing views on immigration.

“Friendship is based on shared values,” Mr. Vance said at the event at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington. He added: “You do not have shared values if you’re so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up.”

Mr. Vance’s comments kicked off the conference, which is known as CPAC and is expected to serve as a three-day celebration of Mr. Trump’s agenda.

The vice president also spoke at the end of the first month of Mr. Trump’s second administration, a period in which the president has issued executive orders at a dizzying speed, often dispensing with longstanding norms of American government.

Mr. Vance acknowledged the “breakneck” pace of Mr. Trump’s second term. Asked by Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump administration official whose husband leads the group that organizes CPAC, what stood out, Mr. Vance offered a full-throated defense of the efforts led by Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to cut federal spending.

Mr. Vance framed Mr. Musk’s push in economic terms, arguing that cutting federal jobs and programs would eventually help lower costs for Americans.

At another point, Mr. Vance seemed to ask Americans to be patient as Mr. Trump tried to follow through on campaign promises to reduce the prices of groceries and energy. “It’s going to take some time to fix what Joe Biden broke over four years,” he said.

Mr. Vance has been a regular presence at CPAC since he won his Senate race in Ohio in 2022. The conference has been a mainstay of Republican politics for decades, but since Mr. Trump’s ascent, it has been dominated by his nativist right-wing strain of conservatism.

Mr. Vance is, in many ways, emblematic of that transformation. He won election through the strength of his ideological alignment with Mr. Trump, and he built broader recognition through appearances in the news media in which he often offered more articulate, cogent defenses of Mr. Trump’s views.

He has also helped Mr. Trump address parts of the conservative movement with which the president has had a more uneasy alliance, including the religious right. Mr. Vance has taken a stronger position opposing abortion than Mr. Trump, who has for years shifted his position on the issue and most recently said it should be left up to the states.

On Thursday, Mr. Vance reiterated Mr. Trump’s stance. But he said he believed that the administration needed to work to make it more affordable for young parents to have children, as part of an effort to “persuade our fellow citizens to stop thinking about babies as inconveniences to be discarded.”

At another moment, Mr. Vance acknowledged that not everyone in his orbit appreciated his often hard-edge tone on X, the Musk-owned platform. Asked by Ms. Schlapp to share advice he had received from his wife, Usha Vance, he revealed one of her suggestions.

“‘You should be nicer on social media,’” he recalled her saying.