Six days before Vice President Vance spoke in Munich, Internationale Politik Quarterly published Heusgen’s interview. On Trump’s re-election: “we did wake up in a new world.” On Biden: “The administration of President Joe Biden was the exception—a reminder of what many people consider the ‘good old days.’” He pointed back to Merkel’s May 2017 line that Europe would not always be able to rely on the United States.
On what to do: “We have to have the right responses—to Russia, to China, and to the second Trump administration. On foreign and security policy, the response can only be: a stronger and more unified Europe.” He said the United States was “likely to do a deal with Russia, and then they tell us what our role will be.” He asked whether the second Trump administration would be an ally on international law: “Perhaps the current US administration will not wake up every morning thinking about how to strengthen international law. But that should be no reason to give up on the rule of law.”
He also said he was “confident” of a strong U.S. presence in Munich, noting that JD Vance had already attended as a senator. That sentence is in the same interview as the “second Trump administration” prescription. The Vance close followed. This page does not invent a Trump quote in reply.