JD Vance has suggested that American support for NATO should be predicated on the European Union not regulating Elon Musk and his X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.
The Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio senator claimed in an interview with YouTuber Shawn Ryan that a top EU official had threatened to arrest the billionaire if he allowed former President Donald Trump back on X.
“The leader, I forget exactly which official it was within the European Union, but sent Elon this threatening letter that basically said, ‘We’re going to arrest you if you platform Donald Trump,’ who, by the way, is the likely next president of the United States,” Vance said in the interview published last week.
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This might be the dumbest thing a candidate in this race has said and that bar is pretty high considering Trump might think political asylum and insane asylums are the same thing.
So far today
This might be the dumbest thing a candidate in this race has said
I’ve given up trying to rank the stupidity level of the various claims and statements Trump and people connected to him have made.
It’s all just toxic garbage.
They are eating Dawgs!
Did you see the part where he questioned where Haitian people are from and said we would send them back to Venezuela? And his running mate said they are from Haitia?
The same Elon Musk who asked why no one is trying to assassinate Harris/Biden? Maybe using your huge platform to become a national security threat should result in sanctions.
The fact that he’s so rich because of government contracts is infuriating
Encouraging assassinations of the current elected president and VP should really earn him the chance to see the inside of a jail cell. Even for a few days while they question him. I think that would be good for everyone involved.
Musk’s donations to the Trump campaign taking center stage.
I think it’s Musk’s backers, the Russians who helped fund the twitter acquisition, who are really taking center stage.
Lots of talk about Europe and NATO means they’re pushing hard for those talking points.
it was the saudi’s not russians who backed the twitter accusation
“the twitter accusation”?
Did google translate barf on ya? Anyway, you’re both right: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/2a00ce74-6d58-4f8e-bc2c-1bb820ee4705.pdf?itid=lk_inline_manual_10
Plus those wiley Canadian banks and some douchebag named “Larry Ellison”
It’s just such a weird turn of events that the Saudies and Russians finance the platform that is touted as the true free speech platform (especially by republicans) - to further undermine the US and other democracies.
Nope, I just cannot spell
I think it’s Musk’s backers, the Russians
Given how heavily sanctioned the Russian domestic industries have been, it would be big news to discover they were doing direct business with any of Musk’s heavily-predicated-on-federal-contracts firms.
I would love to see some evidence to this effect, but it sounds like fantastic conjecture rather than reality.
“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives,” Vance added. “But European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.
The US ranked 26th in the world when it comes to free speech, with several members of the European Union higher up the list, according to the 2024 Global Expression Report.
😂😂😂
“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives, but I’m going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives!”
Hate and Ignorance: The American Way™
WOAH there, slow down a bit.
He would never go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives.
He will send OTHER people, no point in getting his shoes dirty by actually going there.
It’s an American tradition.
You mispronounced republiQan
It’s an amazing thing to say you can abandon a military Alliance because a campaign donor ask you to.
That’s just how the Trumpies do business. “Give me what I want or I’m leaving” is how Trump claimed he renegotiated NAFTA and reworked the US / China trade relationship and was allegedly going to forge an Amazing Massive Incredibly Lucrative New Deal with the then-Brexit-ing UK.
Far more often than not, the renegotiation just involves bribing Trump and his immediate crony base of support in order to leave existing policies alone. That is, incidentally, how Trump left the back door to Mexico open for Chinese EV imports, despite claiming it was the bestest renegotiation of a trade deal in the history of ever.
If Vance is ever in a position of authority, there’s little doubt he’ll be at some NATO summit demanding everyone in Germany buy a copy of Hillbilly Elegy in order to get him to STFU about a pull out.
“ask” he he he
“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives,”
So he’s not just a weird couch fucker, he’s also totally ignorant of US foreign policy over the last hundred years.
“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives,”
What a weird thing for someone who served* in Iraq to say.
*Vance served in Iraq the same way he fucks couches: from the rear.
He “served” in the PR office.
Trying to manipulate public opinion and distort facts has been his entire career.
He’s an isolationist… So this comment might be true. His stance is fuck every other country, I’ve got mine.
Just wait untill they find out many, many, many of their supply chains come from and/or run through countries kept stable only through pax americana. Doing an afghan style withdrawal on a global scale will not only fuck every other country… it will fuck them more.
But who are we kidding, this is just rhetoric. The moment this guy feels he has the power to tell other countries what to do, he absolutely will.
The fact checking in this article is perfect lol
“So what America should be saying is, if NATO wants us to continue supporting them and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance, why don’t you respect American values and respect free speech?” Vance asked. “It’s insane that we would support a military alliance if that military alliance isn’t going to be pro-free speech. I think we can do both. But we’ve got to say American power comes with certain strings attached. One of those is respect free speech, especially in our European allies.”
Musk has been accused of banning several journalists since taking over Twitter, now X.
“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives,” Vance added. “But European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.”
The US ranked 26th in the world when it comes to free speech, with several members of the European Union higher up the list, according to the 2024 Global Expression Report.
I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives
“Nah, we like your people oppressed”
The gall of saying, that entirely different culture that’s been around for longer than our country, they should have our same values, right after calling them backwoods countries. The extreme narcissist egoism is palpable and disgusting.
He didn’t call the Europeans “backwoods countries”. He called those other places that. He specifically says that European countries should be more like us, for all the
whiteright reasons…The insult is the implication. “I wouldn’t tell a backwoods country to be like us, [but we should]. So instead I will tell you that you are not like US [because I actually think that you are backwoods], and you should be like us to [so you aren’t like those backwoods countries anymore].”
So what America should be saying is, if NATO wants us to continue supporting them and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance, why don’t you respect American values and respect free speech?
JD, buddy, what you don’t understand is that Europe’s free speech is far more free than the US.
Americans have a tendency to think they have everything and everyone else has nothing. Until we go somewhere else and discover it’s the other way around.
Americans have a tendency to think they have everything and everyone else has nothing. Until we go somewhere else and discover it’s the other way around.
Obviously healthcare and education are things they are pretty much guaranteed that we don’t have. They have better worker protections. I mean I’m not against gun rights, but what we have in the States is an embarrassment. I’m sure there are several other issues that I’m not thinking of right now or don’t know about, but I didn’t know we had worse free speech than Europe.
What makes Europe free speech more free than ours?
What makes the US have more free speech?
Legally all EU countries have freedom of expression enshrined in their constitutions.
Culturally I find Americans blind to any non governmental censorship. Since it’s legal its OK.I believe not allowing private companies to censor people is absurdly considered a violation of free speech.
There are obvious results as well: the US is way less politically diverse.
That’s true. Ancaps love to talk how almost anything government-done can be done by private entities in the right conditions and social consensus. Turns out this is true for censorship too.
I’m completely ideology-agnostic at this point. Whatever works, works. Nothing around seems to work though.
In any case, while this is true, power goes the shortest way and power corrupts. USA is the hegemon of our world and the center of our civilization, which is now united by American English language and American technologies, and what’s the worst, American corporations. Much more power goes its way to corrupt it.
You know how bad people like to grease in shit the right tools for fixing the problem, preventively? That Putinist thing about “multi-polar” world means that they want to be a little hegemon too, and to have free reign in gray zones. But there is a similar sane point.
But really decentralization of tech research and production and standards is something we all need else we vanish. Right now we have one big Internet with one set of protocols, a handful of very complex software stacks everybody uses, and this situation should already be called a centralized one. Due to network effects and other, mostly with fake argument, kinds of pressure it doesn’t make sense for most people to use parallel systems.
A de-facto conglomerate of companies, social groups, interests and ideas can be a monopolist too.
I’m not who you asked, but I often think of supression tactics against forms of free speech used in the US that some countries in the EU do less. Not all of them (UK online speech policing and arrests as a counterexample), but voter supression, union busting, and law enforcement response to protests have been handled in various countries in ways I consider more free for the citizens.
TLDR: Intimidation tactics and biased response happens less in other countries.
What makes Europe free speech more free than ours?
The gist: While free speech is a constitutional right in both the US and most European countries, free speech is now controlled to a large degree by social media companies in the US.
Here’s a good, short recap of a longer study on the subject from a US scholar: https://news.ku.edu/news/article/2020/01/11/study-analyzes-american-other-free-speech-traditions-suggests-inevitable-clashes
JD: But Germany banned the Nazi symbol! One of the few free speech things I care about!
Europe’s free speech is far more free than the US
But not Europes FREEZEPEACH™! And freezepeach is all that matters
Its a race to the bottom as the police and surveillance states of the entire NATO block fill to bursting.
Vance is bitching because an American company got on the wrong side of the European security state today. Tomorrow, he’ll be clamoring to shut down the BBC or to censor some German metal band for being critical of his Dear Leader.
This is why Europe must take control of its own defense. Europe doesn’t want to be a mere vassal of the US for precisely this reason.
Also parts of nato are not part of eu. Like the the UK.
And Canada. Also, some EU states are not in NATO.
Probably a better example as UK will apply as soon as they can. Unlike Norway who really likes to just pay EU and not have a voice or voting rights
Don’t see the UK getting back in the EU for a while…
I have a bit of schadenfreude around this. For years, people said Europe was fine, and didn’t need to invest more in their military. “No, you silly American, we are just fine with the military we have because we don’t go invading other countries.”
Now here we are. Thing is, I wasn’t even talking from the perspective of Europe becoming warmongers like us. I wanted Europe to be armed well enough to handle what the US has been doing, and the US can draw down its military. Then we could put that money into healthcare and schools and shit, but Europe would have to pick up the slack (and also Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, and Australia). This is still a good idea.
Lol, soon he’ll ask NATO military communication to use Twitter
what the fuck is the link between a shit platform and military alliance
what the fuck is the link between a shit platform and military alliance
Ah yes, the law of equivalent exchange. Force a private company to adhere to your laws? No defensive military pact for you.
Isn’t this in regards to an unofficial letter sent by 1 politician?
And doesn’t that letter talk about banning disinformation?
Also, why is this kid threatening other nations (by weakening them) when they want to protect their people from this kind of influence?
It’s happened to us, so it must happen to you!
If Trump becomes president we should embargo the US like Russia since he’s Putins lapdog
Almost like they’re looking for an excuse to hang NATO out to dry.
Almost…
