Ben Rhodes

This year at the conference, the role of proxy for the Trump administration was played by Secretary Marco Rubio, who offered a more subtle version of the J.D.

Vance message, although he slipped in plenty of nationalist imperialist dog whistles.

After listing the crimes and his view of the post-World War II international order, including trade and investing in welfare states and other good things like dealing with climate change, he got down to business.

So I want to play a clip from this Rubio speech for us to respond to.

All right.

So I wrote something up on Substack about this, but I was there.

And one of the strange things I noticed was, on the one hand, the Europeans in private, you know, and sometimes in public are, you know, furious, alarmed, freaked out about the U.S.,

and what Trump's doing.

On the other hand, there was a lot of thank you for kicking us in the ass and we were going to spend a little more on defense and it's all because of you.

And they gave Rubio a standing ovation.

It felt like a kind of abusive relationship.

You know, they've been kind of, you know, well abused and now they're like kind of thanking us for kicking them in the ass.

But I mean, what did you think of Rubio's speech and the kind of the vibes coming out of Munich?

Well, yeah.

And actually, Eamon, you know, Rubio went on to Hungary to endorse Viktor Orban.

And I'm glad you brought up Ukraine because, you know, there's the rhetoric, but then the substance and the substance there is pretty grim.

And Zelensky showed up.

He tried to talk about new packages of support for Europe ahead of the fourth anniversary of the war.

But really, they're dealing with relentless attacks on their power grid.

Russia and Ukraine met on Tuesday in Switzerland for more talks, but we don't really see an end to the war in sight.