Forget State of the Union sideshow, MAGA’s real chilling message was delivered by Marco Rubio in Munich

As a matter of journalistic duty, I forced myself to watch the endless State of the Union reality show.

Punting on all serious issues, President Donald Trump stoked the applause meter by delivering awards to a 100-year-old vet and a brave U.S. pilot, and inviting the entire U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team to celebrate their gold medal win.

Trump was relentlessly racist (with disgusting slurs against all Somali Americans in Minnesota). His lies were dangerously predictive about the 2026 elections, never tiring of the Big Whopper about winning in 2020 and claiming Democrats must be stopped because they “only win if they cheat.”

In short, the union is in a dangerous state under an amoral, unprincipled, delusional commander in chief.

What disturbed me most as I watched Trump rant on is how a president could be so wholly indifferent to the liberal democratic values that underlie the existence of our nation. Although often honored in the breach, they are what have made this country unique. Yet, the sycophants in his administration, along with most GOP legislators, have chosen to abandon those values, or never believed in them from the start.

For that reason, I’d rank Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the recent Munich Security Conference as far more important than Trump’s sad State of the Union guff.

That’s because Rubio laid out an alternative set of U.S. values promoted abroad and at home by the political theologians of the Trump regime. Precepts that would make the Founding Fathers revolt anew.

The new theology revolves around the theme of saving “thousands of years of Western civilization” from the depredations of “woke” liberal democracy. It is an extension of language long used by white nationalists, and which came back to prominence during the rise of Islamist terrorism in the Mideast, which led to an influx of Syrian and Afghan immigrants into Europe fleeing civil wars at home. It became even more useful to Trumper populists when fanning fears of immigrants at home.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and current Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller latched onto the “saving Western civilization trope” a decade ago, and have embraced its transition into saving Western “Christian civilization.” Somehow, the term, which had been commonly used to describe shared Western religious and cultural identity for decades — Judeo-Christian civilization — has conveniently been shortened.

Never mind the historical inaccuracy of a term that tries to combine thousands of years of shifting, melding populations, ideas, and religions into one neat sum.

Yes, there are obvious philosophical threads from Athens to Rome to the Magna Carta, and ultimately to the values of the Enlightenment. But there are centuries of religious, ethnic, and philosophical wars, as well.

When Vice President JD Vance tried to promote the concept at the Munich Security Conference last year — and to promote white Christian populist parties in Europe as the saviors of “Western civilization” — the audience of European leaders, officials, and think tankers reacted with shock. More so when he berated German leaders for not inviting the neofascist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party into the government, even though its leaders have downplayed Adolf Hitler’s crimes. To add insult to injury, he pointedly paid a visit to the AfD’s political leader.

But Rubio was supposed to be different: the realistic, savvy foreign policy adviser who tried to save Trump from his worst instincts. When the secretary of state delivered remarks that praised U.S.-European ties, the eager audience was at first won over — until reality sank in, and many participants read the text of his speech.

Indeed, Rubio was warmed-over Vance, blaming liberal democracy (which, in the Enlightenment sense, means individual freedoms, human rights and rule of law, and observance of science) for all the West’s ills, and urging Europeans to junk “the global rules-based order.”

It got tiresome hearing Rubio tout the dangers of Western “civilizational erasure.” As Hillary Clinton noted — on a panel titled “The West-West Divide” — “When Rubio talks about Western ‘civilization,’ I never knew he was so supportive of Native Americans.” Then she added, “He is wrong historically.”

Indeed. “Western civilization” has become the MAGA dog whistle that stands for bashing all immigration and playing to racial fears.

No surprise, Rubio had not a word of criticism for the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an attack on “Western civilization,” although Vladimir Putin’s war crimes have upended the relatively peaceful, post-World War II order. And not a word of apology for Trump’s threat to seize Greenland from a NATO ally, which also threatened that order.

Nor any word of recognition that a dog-eat-dog world of unrestrained big power dominance resulting from an end to global “rules” will lead back to the violent era preceding World War II.

Instead, Rubio urged the Europeans not to be “shackled by guilt and shame,” which is a key buzz phrase for the AfD, which urges its members to stop apologizing for Nazi crimes.

And right after his speech, the secretary rushed off to Hungary to praise the pro-Putin Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a Trump ally who has done his best to destroy Hungarian democracy, including press and judicial freedom — and is trying to block European Union aid to Ukraine.

Yet, Orbán’s corruption and Hungary’s economic decline have become so overwhelming that he may be defeated in an April election. But Trump sent Rubio to bolster this antisemitic autocrat who repeats the “saving white Christian civilization” line.

It is no wonder the Munich scene erupted into debate about the West-West division over democratic values. As Germany’s Green Party coleader and Bundestag member, Franziska Brantner, stated: “Our values are rooted in the Enlightenment, in reason, science, freedom of religion, equal rights. The Enlightenment is a project, not a period in history. It is about very concrete individual freedoms, about free elections dependent on the will of the people, not run by oligarchs.”

“I don’t want to go back in history,” Brantner said flatly.

Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg added, in a restrained poke at Trump, “For all those who believe in liberal values and protection of the truth, it is difficult when we see that not all of our allies agree on these values.”

In Europe, at least, there is an active debate about the consequences of the junking of rules and history by the world’s most powerful democracy. The dangers to democracy are more immediately apparent to those who live closer to Russia and Ukraine.

Watching Trump’s performance and Rubio’s subservience, those dangers may seem obvious to many Americans. But they must find a way to get that message across more clearly to those who still doubt the danger here.