Donald Trump posted on Truth Social today, “Tucker Carlson a MUST WATCH tonight. Releasing more VIDEO which was ‘HIDDEN BY THE CROOKED J 6 UNSELECT COMMITTEE.’ They should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!”
CPAC, the regular gathering of the conservative movement made its return to the D.C. area this year after a couple of years in Florida during the pandemic. Previews of the confab focused on how CPAC’s star had “diminished” in stature on the right.
In past presidential election cycles, any candidate, of any ideological leaning, would attend the gathering to prove themselves before the party’s conservative base and right-wing media gatekeepers. It was at CPAC in 2012, for example, that GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney went before the judges and awkwardly described himself as “severely conservative.”
But CPAC was skippable this year for potential presidential candidates—and attendees. Major contenders, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, didn’t show. (Former Vice President Mike Pence also didn’t attend CPAC.) Part of the lighter attendance was the fact that the guy who runs CPAC, lobbyist and operative Matt Schlapp, is under scrutiny for a sexual misconduct allegation. But CPAC had also turned into a show for Trump, and those in the right-wing universe that make money off of him, than anything else.
“It’s a content machine for the right-wing media ecosystem,” a former Romney advisor told the New York Times.
The most notable images of CPAC, then, were the ones showing what appeared to be a consistently half-empty ballroom. And what were they listening to? Well, the hard sells of investment “opportunities” weren’t just limited to shady operators in the vendors’ room anymore. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the conservative media personality and girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., was doing it herself off of a teleprompter.
But even with limited attendance from presidential hopefuls and, you know, attendees in general, did this scammier-than-usual CPAC offer any traditional news, in terms of advancing presidential-cycle plotlines? A bit.
DeSantis and other presidential didn’t want to show up for what was, essentially, a Trump rally. Trump certainly showed up, though, giving a 90-minute speech on Saturday. In the speech, the former president laid out themes for his 2024 run, which he dubbed “the final battle.”
This was not the relaxed, riffing Trump regaling attendees about his NBC ratings or how he saw a famous person’s boob in 1988. This was more of the dystopian, resentful Trump of his “American Carnage” inauguration speech in 2017, or his “marching over to the Capitol” speech before the mob invasion of Jan. 6, 2021.
He spoke about his influence reshaping the party. “We had a Republican Party that was ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists, open borders zealots and fools, but we are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush,” he said. “We will expel the warmongers, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, we will throw off the political class that hates our country.” The country, he said, is in an “epic battle” against “sinister forces” as the nation was becoming a “crime-ridden, filthy communist nightmare.”
“In 2016, I declared: I am your voice,” Trump said. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”
Trump won the CPAC presidential straw poll with 62 percent of the vote. DeSantis got 20 percent.
