Two of the biggest names in U.S. politics, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, traveled to Europe this week to participate in the Munich Security Conference. Both are ascendant figures in their respective parties, of Latin American heritage, and potential high-profile contenders for the presidency in 2028.
The split-screen produced by their respective performances could not have been more stark in substance and tone.
Ocasio-Cortez’s journey to Munich was billed as her foreign policy debut on the world stage. It went about as poorly as it possibly could have. During a panel discussion, Ocasio-Cortez was asked a straightforward question about whether the U.S. should commit troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. Her meandering answer made Kamala Harris’s famous word salads of 2024 appear Shakespearean by contrast.
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“Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a um — this is, of course, a, um, very long-standing, um, policy of the United States and I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation — and for that question to even arise,” she said.
The moment sucked the air out of Ocasio-Cortez’s 2028 balloon in a brisk stream. It would have been one thing to have a brain freeze like this during the bustle of a chaotic campaign rally or a late-night cable hit. But to arrive at a global security conference unprepared to answer a straightforward question about the single most consequential global security issue speaks to a deeper dysfunction. Worse than giving a bad answer, she didn’t give one at all. She couldn’t because she hadn’t thought the matter through.
To be certain, if you can’t articulate a China policy, you aren’t qualified to be anywhere near the presidency in the next few years. There’s no way to sugarcoat it.
Later remarks about reestablishing a “rules-based” international order were similarly painful.
“What we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the west we look the other way for inconvenient populations, to act out these paradoxes,” she said.
If you know what that means, you’re either much smarter than the average person — or much dumber.
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Ocasio-Cortez came to Munich to brandish her credentials as a serious thinker. But she reinforced perceptions that she remains out of her depth beyond our borders.
Contrast this with the impression Rubio left on Munich. In a 30-minute keynote speech, the Secretary of State delivered a pitch-perfect articulation of America First foreign policy principles in a manner that caused our European allies to stand and cheer.
“We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours,” he said. “The fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to our own.”
His combination of hard-edged substance and soaring eloquence won over a skeptical audience following the U.S.-Europe dustup over Greenland. Rubio didn’t relent one iota over demands that Europe address the problems that have caused its decline, including its mass migration crisis, its ongoing commitment to climate hysteria, and its attachment to the “dangerous delusion that we’d entered into the end of history” following the fall of the Soviet Union.
“This was a foolish idea,” Rubio said plainly. “And it ignored both human nature and the lessons of over 5,000 years of human history. And it cost us dearly.”
Yet despite these salvos against the liberal international order and Europe’s missteps, Rubio’s emphasis on shared civilizational roots and intertwined fates bridged the Transatlantic divide. Compelling European leaders to stand and cheer a full-throated defense of Trumpism in 2026 was a rhetorical feat for the ages — one that traded the friction of the past for a shared future on America’s terms.
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Rubio’s speech was the work of a master statesman. Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks were the bumblings of a neophyte.
For the GOP, the Munich split-screen is a dream contrast.
