Tearful chair of Munich Security Conference expresses ‘fear’ in farewell address after blistering Vance speech

The outgoing chairman of the Munich Security Conference delivered an emotional farewell speech that ended in tears, after he expressed “fear” over Vice President JD Vance’s blistering speech to the annual conference on international security policy.

“This conference started as a trans-Atlantic conference,” German diplomat and chair of the conference Christoph Heusgen said Sunday. “After the speech of Vice President Vance on Friday, we have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore. I’m very grateful to all those European politicians that spoke out and reaffirmed the values and principles that they are defending. No one did this better than President Zelenskyy, who has been fighting for these values – democracy, freedom, rule of law for the past three years.” 

Heusgen’s speech marked the close to his leadership of the Munich Security Conference, as former Secretary-General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg takes the reins of the international security forum. Heusgen had served as leader of the forum since 2022. 

Social media critics began posting snippets of Heusgen’s speech to X Sunday, claiming the German diplomat and longtime advisor to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel broke down in tears over his frustrations with Vance’s blistering speech to the international body. The conference clarified on X that the diplomat reportedly broke down due to his speech being his last as chairman of the forum. 

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“Our former Chair Christoph Heusgen did not shed a few tears out of ‘frustration.’ It was his farewell speech as he was leaving the MSC after this year’s conference. He was saying goodbye to the team at this very moment. The video snippet here is edited together,” the conference posted to X Monday morning. 

The full video of Heusgen’s speech shows him breaking down into tears after warning that “our rules-based international order is under pressure.” 

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“It is clear that our rules-based international order is under pressure,” he said. “It is my strong belief… that this multipolar world needs to be based on a single set of norms and principles, on the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This order is easy to disrupt, it’s easy to destroy, but it’s much harder to rebuild, so let us stick to these values. Let us not reinvent them, but focus on strengthening their consistent application.” 

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President Donald Trump has frequently taken shots at the United Nations since his first administration, and said earlier in February that the U.N. was “not being well run” and needs to get its “act together.” 

“Let me conclude. And this becomes difficult,” Heusgen said, choking up, before leaving the podium on the stage and hugging various members of the audience. 

A spokesperson for the conference reiterated to Fox News Digital Monday that Heusgen teared up solely due to the fact that he was ending his three-year term leading the forum and that “many long-time participants and friends were in the Conference Hall to say goodbye” to the diplomat. 

“I was truly touched by the warm farewell I received from the entire MSC team and so many friends after my last MSC as chairman,” Heusgen added in comment to Fox News Digital. “It was a very emotional moment on stage at the end of my term. A video is circulating on the internet that takes this scene of my departure out of context. Unfortunately, this once again shows how the mechanisms of disinformation work.”

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His speech to the assembly followed Vance’s on Friday, where the U.S. vice president lambasted “Soviet”-style European censorship, joked about left-wing environmentalist Greta Thunberg, and slammed ongoing immigration woes that have throttled European nations and the U.S. under the Biden administration. 

“Trust me, I say this with all humor,” Vance said at one point of his speech. “If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.” 

Vance also took issue with current immigration practices across the world, calling them “out-of-control migration” policies that include allowing unvetted migrants into foreign nations. Vance’s comments followed a suspect identified as an Afghan migrant ramming a car into pedestrians at a trade union demonstration in Munich Thursday, killing a mother and child and injuring at least 37 others. 

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“But why did this happen in the first place?” Vance said in his speech of the Munich car attack. “It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately, too many times in the United States, as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” 

Other world leaders seemingly took issue with Vance’s speech during the forum, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying the day after Vance’s speech that Germany rejects “outsiders intervening in our democracy.”

Stateside, conservatives have celebrated Vance’s speech as “almost Reaganesque,” “pro-American” and pro-free speech on social media and during Fox News interviews.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Munich Security Conference on Monday for additional comment regarding Heusgen’s speech and did not immediately receive a reply.