U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio received a standing ovation at the Munich Security Conference after delivering a speech centered on Western civilization, national sovereignty and the cultural bonds between the United States and Europe — remarks that later triggered a sharp and meandering response from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Rubio opened his address by recalling the historic alliance between the U.S. and Europe, pointing to moments such as the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis as evidence that “thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance” before being secured through transatlantic unity. He argued that the same alliance now faces internal strain from mass migration and cultural fragmentation.
“In a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people,” Rubio said, framing border security not as isolationism but as an expression of sovereignty.
Throughout the speech, Rubio emphasized shared Christian heritage as a cornerstone of Western identity. He traced America’s origins to European settlers who carried “the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance.” That faith, he argued, underpins the political and cultural systems that bind Europe and the United States together.
He also highlighted the layered European influences that shaped the United States — from English legal traditions to Scots-Irish frontier spirit, from German agricultural development to French exploration.
In a line that later drew outsized criticism, Rubio said, “Our horses, our ranches, our rodeos — the entire romance of the cowboy archetype that became synonymous with the American West — these were born in Spain.”
The broader theme was unmistakable: Western civilization is historically interconnected, and preserving it requires seriousness from both sides of the Atlantic.
While Rubio’s remarks were met with approval inside the conference hall, Ocasio-Cortez took a dramatically different view during a separate event in Berlin.
Appearing at a TU Berlin discussion alongside German lawmaker Isabel Cademartori, Ocasio-Cortez was asked about income inequality and wealth concentration. Instead of focusing on economic policy, she pivoted to Rubio’s speech.
“You are starting to see the ascent of the right, even in places like Munich,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Marco Rubio’s speech was a pure appeal to Western culture.”
She singled out his comments on cowboy heritage, telling the audience, “My favorite part was when he said that American cowboys came from Spain. I believe the Mexicans and descendants of African slave— enslaved peoples would like to have a word on that.”
Historians have long documented that Spanish vaqueros — cattle herders in Spain and later in Spanish-colonized Mexico and the American Southwest — heavily influenced the development of cowboy culture in the United States.
She framed her response in class-based terms, saying the appropriate political answer is “material, it’s class-based, it’s common interest,” and called for ending what she described as “the hypocrisy towards the global south.”
Notably, Rubio’s address centered on maintaining strong U.S.-European ties in the face of geopolitical instability, mass migration and cultural drift. His argument was that Western nations are bound by history, faith and shared sacrifice — and that acknowledging those bonds is essential to sustaining the alliance.
Rubio left the stage to applause. Ocasio-Cortez left critics questioning whether her attack on a historically grounded cultural reference had missed the larger point of the speech altogether.