At Cpac, Vance Finally Gets The Reception He Wishes He Got In Munich

OXON HILL, Maryland — When Vice President JD Vance delivered an eviscerating speech in Europe last week that marked a hairpin turn away from decades of American foreign policy, he couldn’t have had a less receptive audience.

But on Thursday, Vance brought that globalism-bashing, culture warrior message stateside — and solidified his role as the America First movement’s communicator-in-chief.

“I’m glad you guys liked it. Not everybody liked it, you guys liked it,” Vance told the CPAC crowd of the speech he gave last week in Munich. There, it had generated more groans than applause, but here, just a short mention of it caused the crowd of thousands to whistle and stand.

“I’ll take a standing ovation for a speech I already gave,” Vance said. “Two for the price of one.”

Exactly one month into his vice presidential tenure, as the first guest at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington, Vance praised President Donald Trump for his fire hose of early executive actions and frequently returned to the administration’s priorities to “secure the southern border,” “drill baby drill” and “spend the American people’s tax money on the American people’s priorities.”

But surrounded by the bastions of the conservative movement he and Trump helped shape into its present-day iteration, Vance also appeared empowered to not just platform the administration’s achievements, but to bask in his role as a MAGA prince.

CPAC is familiar and friendly ground for Vance, a hero of the “new right” who has been attending the conservative confab each year since he was first sworn in as a senator in 2023. The audience was a sea of MAGA hats. And when the Christian artist Natasha Owens opened the event with the national anthem, her gown read “Democrats officially getting exposed” — a play on the DOGE acronym.

And Vance was their culture warrior.

American culture “wants to turn everybody, whether male or female, into androgynous idiots who think the same, talk the same and act the same,” he said. “We actually think God made male and female for a purpose and he wants you guys to thrive.”

The vice president, who at 40 is just over half Trump’s age, is widely viewed as the GOP’s heir apparent to take over from a term-limited Trump in 2028. He must thread a fine line between staying visible without stealing Trump’s spotlight — and remaining aligned with the president’s policy positions while subtly signaling where his could differ.

When moderator Mercedes Schlapp asked Vance what the White House would do to “defend the unborn,” Vance began by praising Trump for setting up a Supreme Court that could overturn Roe v. Wade, delivering the question of abortion back to the states — the standard Trump administration messaging on an issue where going further proved a political liability.

But speaking as a “devout Christian,” Vance continued, “We've got to persuade our fellow citizens that unborn life is worthy of protecting. It is sacred in the eyes of God, and it should be sacred in the eyes of man too.”