Secretary of State Marco Rubio leads US to Munich Security Conference

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the U.S. delegation to the high-profile Munich Security Conference — a year after Vice President JD Vance took the German stage in a speech that stunned many in Europe and became one of the defining moments at the start of Trump’s second term abroad.

“President Trump has assembled the most talented team in history, including Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio, who are working closely together to achieve victories for the American people,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told Fox News Digital ahead of Rubio’s speech.

“The President and his team have deployed their foreign policy prowess to end decades-long wars, secure peace in the Middle East, and restore American dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The entire administration is working together to restore peace through strength and put America first.”

The Munich Security Conference is an annual high-level forum in Germany that attracts hundreds of top decision-makers – including heads of state, senior ministers, military leaders and political influencers – for public and closed-door discussions on global security crises.

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Vice President JD Vance took the German stage a year ago in a speech that stunned many in Europe and became one of the defining moments at the start of Trump’s second term abroad. (Matthias Schrader/Associated Press)

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California are among the notable Democrats attending the conference, in addition to Rubio.

Vance became one of the central figures at the 2025 Munich rally after a widely publicized speech that drew attention and applause from conservatives who followed the Biden administration. It also sparked backlash among some European officials who viewed his remarks as confrontational.

Rubio’s participation in the 2026 meeting follows a long history in which the head of the State Department served in a series of different roles during the second administration, including acting national security adviser, secretary of state, acting archivist of the United States and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Amid growing transatlantic tension, the secretary of state issued a warning to Europe as he left for his trip to Germany on Thursday.

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“The Old World is gone,” Rubio told reporters as he left for Europe on Thursday. “Frankly, the world I grew up in and we’re living in a new geopolitical era, and it’s going to force us all to re-examine what that looks like and what our role is going to be.”

President Donald Trump and his administration have repeatedly warned Europe for allegedly moving toward a culture of political correctness, speech policing and a security system that relies heavily on U.S. funding and military power. Amid the rhetoric about Europe, the administration has continued to emphasize the importance of the U.S. relationship with Europe, including Rubio on Thursday.

“We are very closely linked to Europe,” he told reporters. “Most people in this country can trace their cultural and personal heritage back to Europe, so we just have to talk about it.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio leads the U.S. delegation to the high-profile Munich Security Conference. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

Vance used his speech at the Munich Security Conference to issue a stark warning to Europe’s political class in 2025, saying the continent’s greatest danger is not Moscow or Beijing, but what he described as internal democratic decline that has festered due to political correctness and censorship.

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He accused governments and European institutions of drifting toward censorship, citing policies he said were policing, restricting religious expression and putting pressure on online platforms. He also argued that elites allegedly attempted to manage elections and debates by dismissing undesirable results and labeling dissent as “disinformation” in order to marginalize populists and dampen voter backlash.

“What worries me is the threat from within, Europe’s retreat from some of its most fundamental values ​​- values ​​shared with the United States of America,” Vance said in 2025 in a speech that left many European leaders stunned, according to reports at the time.

Vance was also abroad this week, holding meetings with Armenia and Azerbaijan, including signing peaceful nuclear cooperation with Armenia and a strategic partnership with Azerbaijan.

The trip followed Vance and Rubio’s participation in a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni earlier in February in Italy, and Vance leading a delegation including Rubio to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Milan.

A close source told Fox News Digital that there were never plans for the vice president to attend the 2026 conference in Munich.

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Vance’s foreign policy imprint came under political media scrutiny in early 2026, when the U.S. military successfully captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Vance was not among the top U.S. leaders who joined Trump at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, resort to oversee the operation, unlike Rubio who was with the president.

The vice president’s office brushed aside media concerns about his absence, saying Trump and Vance were limiting “the frequency and duration” of the time they spend together outside the White House due to “increased security concerns.”

The vice president is by no means expected to attend the Munich Security Conference every year, with former Vice President Mike Pence, for example, attending the conference twice during the first Trump administration, and former Vice President Kamala Harris three times during the Biden administration. Former secretaries of state such as John Kerry, Antony Blinken and Clinton have attended and spoken at this forum in previous years.

Vance also attended a separate Munich Security Conference event, the Leaders Conference, in Washington, DC, in May 2025.

Trump praised Vance’s 2025 speech as “brilliant” in a statement to reporters at the time, noting that “they are losing their wonderful right to free speech” in Europe and that Vance made a strong case against much of Europe’s lax immigration policies.

Since then, Trump’s team has repeatedly echoed the same criticism in official channels, including a State Department initiative that blasted European speech restrictions and called the European Union’s Digital Services Act “Orwellian” censorship, alongside new visa restrictions targeting foreign officials accused of censoring Americans online.

As recently as December 2025, President Donald Trump castigated European nations for not being “recognizable” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

As recently as December 2025, Trump lambasted European nations for not being “recognizable” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, setting off what could be another fiery speech from Americans on European soil on Saturday.

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“I don’t want to insult anyone and say I don’t recognize it,” Trump said during his special speech in Davos, Switzerland. “And it’s not in a positive way. It’s in a very negative way. And I love Europe and I want to see it do good, but it’s not going in the right direction.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment on Friday.