• Feb. 20, 2025Updated 1:09 p.m. ET

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday offered a defense of the frenetic first month of President Trump’s second term, using an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference to reinforce the two men’s shared views on foreign policy in particular.

Mr. Vance, fresh off a speech in Munich that provoked deep concern in Europe over his embrace of a far-right German political party, said that he believed the future of America’s relationships with European allies would depend on whether they embrace right-wing views on immigration.

“Friendship is based on shared values,” Mr. Vance said at the event at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington. He added: “You do not have shared values if you’re so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up.”

Mr. Vance’s comments kicked off the conference, which is known as CPAC and is expected to serve as a three-day celebration of Mr. Trump’s agenda.

The vice president also spoke at the end of the first month of Mr. Trump’s second administration, a period in which the president has issued executive orders at a dizzying speed, often dispensing with longstanding norms of American government.

Mr. Vance acknowledged the “breakneck” pace of Mr. Trump’s second term. Asked by Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump administration official whose husband leads the group that organizes CPAC, what stood out, Mr. Vance offered a full-throated defense of the efforts led by Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to cut federal spending.