Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is an old friend, Jamie Kurchick. He has written just about everywhere, from the New York Times, the tablet magazine, to air mail, a longtime writer on all sorts of issues, but especially of politics and foreign policy where he's gone overseas and covered war zones. And he is the

author of several books, but the most relevant to what we discussed today is a book he wrote about

a decade ago called The End of Europe, Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. He reported on

and lived in Germany for a year, I believe. That's why I have him on to discuss

J.D. Vance's speech in Munich, what we need to understand about the German elections,

what is the AFD party that you have seen J.D. Vance and Elon Musk support and other questions

of what is going on in Europe and what might be the costs of tearing down some of the

infrastructure we built up since World War II and the alliances we have there. I think you're

going to find this interesting and educational. I certainly did. So without further ado, I give you

Mr. Jamie Kerchuk, welcome to the Dispect podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Well, I brought you on primarily, so I saw the German elections were happening and what was

surrounding who the administration was supporting and sending feelers out to.

But I think I want to begin just at the top with J.D. Vance's speech in Munich.

And just get your general thoughts on what you thought about what he said.

So I thought his speech would have been a wonderful speech to give at a think tank conference

or on a television debate show if one were a commentator on politics. I largely agreed with the substance. I mean, I've

written for years about the harshness of speech laws, hate speech laws, all sorts of speech

laws and speech restrictions in Europe. I have a very long track record on that. I'm pretty

much a free speech absolutist,

but I do not think that the Munich Security Conference was the place for such, for airing such

disagreements. I mean, this is a security conference, right? And it was founded in the heat of the

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