JD Vance Leads Anti-European Crusade With White House In Sight

The US Vice President expressed strong hostility toward Europe during discussions on the Signal network leaked by The Atlantic, which sparked a political scandal in the United States. These remarks reflect both a deep-seated trend within the Trump movement and the ideological and political choices of JD Vance, who is aiming for the White House in 2029.

For JD Vance, it doesn’t matter that this group on Signal was intended to coordinate an attack on the Houthis in Yemen at the highest levels of government . In his first message, he expressed the fact that he “hated coming to the aid of the Europeans in this way.”

An unleashed Trumpist

What do US bombings in Yemen have to do with European interests? According to JD Vance, this US operation aims to secure navigation in the Suez Canal, through which “40% of European commercial traffic” passes, and much less for the United States. JD Vance states in these exchanges that only 4% of North American trade transits this waterway.

This is not the first time the Vice President has attacked Europe. The International Security Conference in Munich , Germany, in mid-February provided him with a platform to criticize the 27 member states, their values, and their economic model.

Flashback three years. In 2022, when JD Vance was still a newly elected senator from Ohio, he unleashed his Euroscepticism by criticizing the unelected “technocrats” of the European Union, George V Magazine points out.

For some experts interviewed by France 24, JD Vance is simply saying out loud what Donald Trump has been thinking to himself since 2016. “Even during his first term, the American president had a very combative attitude towards Europe, barely hiding his contempt for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example. But, there were still bigwigs in the Conservative Party who prevented him from going too far,” assures a specialist in American politics at Queen’s University Belfast.

JD Vance would embody the unbridled version of Trumpism which, “since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has been hitting Europe on the pretext that it lets the United States do the work of defending a country very far from the Americans without giving anything in return”, summarizes Andrew Gawthorpe, specialist in contemporary history of the United States at the university and author of the newsletter “America Explained” .

In this respect, Europe would bear the brunt of the America First doctrine. In 2016, it was China that was primarily designated as the profiteer of the United States; in 2025, the scapegoat is the Old Continent.

“It’s also a more extreme version of the American exceptionalism that has inspired the foreign policy of other American presidents,” says Christopher Featherstone, a specialist in American foreign policy at the University of York. This deeply right-wing doctrine holds that only the United States, as a superpower and by some kind of divine or moral right, can impose its views on the world. “It was because of this exceptionalism that George W. Bush completely ignored the opposition of part of the international community to the Iraq War in 2003,” says Christopher Featherstone.

The man from Silicon Valley and Christian values

Donald Trump and his allies are not content with this “I don’t care” attitude toward the international community’s opinion. They are adopting an antagonistic stance toward countries, such as those in Europe, which they believe stand in their way of their ideological path.

JD Vance embodies this stance toward Europe. But for the vice president, the anti-European attitude has even deeper roots. “We must not forget that he is the political champion of influential Silicon Valley figures such as Peter Thiel . These individuals have a libertarian vision opposed to Europe and its regulations,” emphasizes Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, PhD in American civilization and author of “Trump’s Words.”

It is also his ties to Silicon Valley that explain his fierce defense of the absolutist vision of freedom of expression, also put forward by Elon Musk . “For him, it is not acceptable that countries, in Europe for example, can have a different approach to freedom of expression,” notes Christopher Featherstone.

JD Vance also sees Europe as a cultural battleground, which can be partly explained “by his conversion in 2019 to a very conservative version of Catholicism,” says Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy. The vice president presents himself as a “post-liberal Catholic,” who draws inspiration from a very specific traditionalist current called “integralism .” He advocates the idea that church and state must be unified in order to better defend the values ​​of an ultra-conservative Catholicism.

This is why he goes so far as to “openly support far-right parties in Europe, such as the German AfD , because for him, these parties would be the best relays of his values ​​in Europe,” says Andrew Gawthorpe.

White House Goal

But for JD Vance, this isn’t just an ideological crusade. The vice president is a political animal “who is auditioning for the position of Donald Trump’s heir apparent [for the 2029 presidential election, editor’s note] and wants to prove that he understands his electoral base,” assures George V Magazine.

Attacking Europe seems like a good way to achieve this. “He likes to point out that he comes from a rural background where support for his very traditional values ​​is very strong among the Conservative electorate,” Andrew Gawthorpe points out. By criticizing Europe for having betrayed these values—whether through laws favorable to the LGBTQ+ community or not being sufficiently firm in the face of the migration “threat”—he hopes to win points with this electorate.

Attacking Europe also reawakens an old feeling still present “among conservatives who see Europeans as intellectuals, weak and who do not know how to defend themselves,” continues Andrew Gawthorpe.

Christopher Featherstone believes that on the right, there are “two main candidates seeking Donald Trump’s approval to be the next Republican Party candidate: Ron DeSantis, who focuses on domestic politics with measures like book censorship , and JD Vance, who thinks he has a card to play on the international stage.” Even if it means permanently damaging relations between the United States and Europe.

AFP