Does a viral clip authentically show the outgoing Munich Security Conference Chairman, Christoph Heusgen, getting emotional while discussing U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance's remarks at the conference? No, that's not true: The video was edited. The altered version removed more than five minutes of Heusgen's address, separating the moment when he mentioned Vance and when he got emotional coming off the stage. The clip showed a part of Heusgen's farewell address and last speech as chairman of the Munich Security Conference. He told Lead Stories that the clip took the scene out of context and referred to it as disinformation.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X where it was published on February 16, 2025. It opened:
BREAKING: Watch as Christoph Heusgen, German diplomat and chairman of the Munich Security Conference, breaks down in frustration while reacting to J.D. Vance's absurd pro-Russian speech at the conference...
The post included a 53-second clip where Heusgen appeared to be saying the following:
...started as a transatlantic conference. After the speech of Vice President Vance on Friday, we have to fear that our common-value base is not that common anymore. I'm very grateful to all those European politicians that spoke out and reaffirmed the values and principles that they are defending. No one did it better that President Zelenskyy. Let me conclude, and that becomes difficult... (Applause).
This is what it looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 17 16:10:52 2025 UTC)
The clip shared on social media did not authentically portray Heusgen's February 16, 2025, address. The digitally edited version of it cut together the first (beginning from the 01:00 mark) and the last seconds (at the 5:43 mark) of the speech, omitting most contents of the remarks, as seen in the original recording.
Vance spoke at the conference on February 14, 2025.
Heusgen (archived here), a German diplomat, was in charge of the conference between 2022 and 2025, and his February 16, 2025, remarks concluded the time of his chairmanship.
On February 17, 2025, Heusgen told Lead Stories via email
I was truly touched by the warm farewell I received from the entire MSC team and so many friends after my last MSC as Chairman. It was a very emotional moment on stage at the end of my term. A video is circulating on the internet that takes this scene of my departure out of context. Unfortunately, this once again shows how the mechanisms of disinformation work.
On February 17, 2025, the Munich Security Conference also published a statement on X (archived here), addressing the claim:
Our former Chair Christoph Heusgen did not shed a few tears out of "frustration". It was his farewell speech as he was leaving the MSC after this year's conference. He was saying goodbye to the team at this very moment.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning J.D. Vance can be found here.
Articles on claims about international stories are here.
