Many of the Democrats who came to the Munich Security Conference this weekend want to be president. But even if one of them can win the White House in 2028, they may find they can no longer claim the title every American president since the 1940s has borne: leader of the free world.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom went on stage to insist his state is more permanent than President Donald Trump. But he acknowledged in an interview with CNN that the leaders he met with believe the damage to the transatlantic alliance is irrevocable.
Progressive star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York came to pitch a left-wing populist foreign policy but made headlines for a massive stumble instead.
A number of Democratic senators hoping to burnish their foreign policy credentials ahead of possible presidential bids found themselves in a painfully awkward moment with the Danish prime minister, as some Democrats tried to smooth over pugnacious remarks Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham made at the start of the meeting that suggested Trump has not given up his designs on Greenland – a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
And most members of the House of Representatives who planned to attend didn’t come at all after Republican Speaker Mike Johnson pulled the plug on the congressional delegation.
European thought leaders were reduced to offering a brief standing ovation to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose speech was far more conciliatory than the one Vice President JD Vance delivered at the same gathering last year. But Rubio had kicked off his trip telling American reporters: “The old world is gone.” He also left the conference to fly onward to Slovakia and Hungary, two countries led by strongmen sympathetic to Trump.
The conference’s opening remarks from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz crystallized Europe’s new reality in what seems to be rapidly becoming a post-American century.
“A divide has opened up between Europe and the United States,” Merz said Friday. “The United States’ claim to leadership has been challenged, and possibly lost.”
It’s more than just words. Merz has said he held “confidential talks” with France on European nuclear deterrence. It’s a stunning admission there’s no longer unconditional trust that the US will do what needs to be done for its transatlantic allies.
“What I’m hearing now is, even if we are able to repair these relationships, it’s going to take generations before they feel comfortable,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, of Arizona, a possible presidential hopeful who traveled to Munich not long after learning the Trump administration had tried and failed to indict him over a video he made telling troops not to obey illegal orders.
Back home, of course, Democrats’ prospects have been improving fast. Trump’s approval rating has dropped, and Democrats have an opportunity to win back control of the House in this year’s midterm elections.
“Trump’s going to get shellacked in the midterms. He knows that. The world is becoming, I think, more and more familiar with that reality,” Newsom told in Munich.
A handful of Democratic House members made the effort to travel to the conference independently after the delegation was canceled, including Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado. The Army veteran and key voice on national security issues is also leading recruitment for Democrats trying to take back the House this fall.
In the conference halls, he was trying to reassure European leaders Democrats are poised to wrest at least some power in Washington back from Trump. But he also stood with Ocasio-Cortez to warn the post-World War II rules-based order was leaving average people behind.
“While many of those institutions and rules created peace, we now stand in a moment where many of them have failed to deliver for the working-class people in most of our communities and countries,” Crow told reporters at a press conference Saturday.
And Europe’s leaders have endured the same whiplash as the American public, spending the first Trump term willing to believe his election was an aberration. Trump’s reelection and his emboldened attitude on the world stage in his second term has Europe convinced this isn’t a strange departure from normal.
“The international order based on rights and rules is in the process of being destroyed,” Merz said in his speech. “This order – imperfect even its best times – no longer exists in this form.”
