A Government of Pretenders (Part 2 of 2)

"To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice."-- JD Vance (Yes, he really said that. EU security conference, 2/14/25.)

 John Nance Garner III, FDR's first vice president, bluntly said the office wasn't "worth a bucket of warm piss."

Colorful phrases aside, the vice presidency is well known as the black hole of American politics. Only the best, brightest, and most politically astute escape it intact, ready to fight another day. Vance is unlikely to be one of those.

On February 14 in an early post-inauguration speech to the EU security conference in Munich, Vance tested out his new role as Donny John's attack dog. It didn't go well.

After the requisite patter, JD delivered the punch: Dismissing Russia and China as dangers to Europe, he told the gathering that "what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.

"I was struck," he continued in Trumpspeak--long on innuendo and short on fact--"that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany, too."¹

Really? Just what might these "most fundamental . . . values shared with the United States of America" be? Well you may ask. We'll get there.

But first, if you can resist looking too far ahead, read the following paragraph and say the first politician's name that comes into your mind:

What presidential candidate has been described as "pro-Russian, anti-NATO and far-right, and has been described as a right-wing populist, ultranationalist, and conspiracy theorist"?²

If I were a betting man, I might go out on a limb and say that a lot of you named Donny John. If you did, you would be exactly right. But there is one other exactly right answer: Călin Georgescu.

Georgescu, who fits all the above descriptors, took first place in elections for the Romanian presidency held November 24, 2024. Because none of the candidates received more than 50% of the votes, a second round of elections was scheduled for December 8. But just two days before that second round, the Romanian Constitutional Court abruptly threw out the results of the first round and canceled the second.

The context was not the annulment of a completely decided election, as Vance implied, but something more akin to our primaries. The court action was taken December 6, 2024 after formerly classified evidence was brought forward of possible Russian interference in the election in support of Georgescu.

The unnamed former commissioner cited by Vance was Thierry Breton, a former French EU commissioner. His remarks quoted by Vance were originally broadcast on French channel BFMTV on January 9, 2025. Vance cited Breton's comments as "recent" on Feb. 14--more than a month later. That's hardly recent. It suggests that Trump and Vance thought the story would be a good way to ambush the Europeans for allegedly slipping away from those alleged "values shared with the United States of America."

But what did Breton actually say? At no point in the interview does he express "delight" at the annulment of the Romanian election. Rather, he spoke pragmatically about the EU response to election tampering: “The law is there" (and) "The European Commission, which is the guardian of these laws, must enforce them.”³ (The EU has no power to annul individual national elections, but it can prosecute election tampering anywhere within the union).

Breton's comments about German elections sounded nothing like a warning or a threat, and there is no hint of there being "a plan" afoot: “Let's wait and see what happens. Let's keep our cool and enforce our laws in Europe when their circumvention is at risk and non-enforcement could lead to interference.

The concern about the German elections was focused on the far-right AfD (German Alternative) party. As it turned out, AfD took second place in the contest for Bundestag seats, with no problems. At the time of Vance's speech the elections were slightly more than a week away. 

So why was Vance so heated up about German elections? Because the potential threat to them that was so worrying to the EU was none other than Elon Musk. Yep. Donny Boy's golden boy himself. Musk had been supporting AfD for months at the time of the elections, although the exact nature of his support is uncertain.

The Romanian annulment and challenge to the far-right Georgescu must have spooked Musk and/or Trump enough for someone to decide to send Vance to Munich as an intimadator.

The point, which I'm sure you've got by now, is that Vance, second in command of the most corrupt administration in the nation's history, was badgering the democratic states of Europe for not falling in line with Trump. Throughout the speech he picked out specific countries for having "anti-democratic" laws. This from the mouthpiece of the greatest enemy of democracy since Soviet times. In fact, at one point he used the old Soviet term commissar for the EU commissioners, claiming the European nations weren't acting like winners of the Cold War.

Too bad we don't have a mechanism to annul elections.

-- Diogenes, 12 March 2025

 

¹ All Vance quotes from "Full Transcript: VP JD Vance Remarks at the Munich Security Conference," The Singju Post, February 15, 2025 4:36 a.m. Accessed March 9, 2025.

² Wikipedia, Călin Georgescu entry, accessed March 10, 2025.

³ All Breton quotes from transcript of "On l'a fait en Roumanie..." interview with Apolline de Malherbe, Jan. 9, 2025. BFMTV, accessed March 10, 2025. Translation by DeepL.