If Trump rallies are for his fans, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is for his zealots. In his keynote address to the conference on Saturday, Donald Trump let his most devoted followers know that he was a “proud political dissident” on a mission to liberate the United States from Joe Biden.
Though he avoided heavy doses of the “American Carnage” style rhetoric that has been a staple of his scripted speeches, Trump still repeated his dark warnings about “migrant crime” and told the crowd that the “only thing between you and obliteration is me.” He even went so far as to suggest that him winning the 2024 presidential election would be like the end of some foreign occupation. “For hardworking Americans, November 5 will be our new liberation day,” Trump said. “But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be judgment day.”
He told the rapt audience that a vote for him “is your ticket back to freedom, it’s your passport out of tyranny, and it’s your only escape from Joe Biden and his gang’s fast track to hell.”
The former president also spent much of the event indulging in the discursive rambling that marked much of his first presidential campaign. After all, he didn’t need to adhere too closely to the teleprompter for this audience. CPAC was once considered the premier right wing gathering in the U.S., where a variety of conservative leaders and activists could link up, share ideas, and try to push their agendas forward. Not anymore. Now, it’s a niche MAGA convention that only seems crowded when Trump himself appears and increasingly has the feel of a reunion — if not a commemoration — for those who wanted to overturn a presidential election on January 6, 2021.
So this was where Trump could champion himself as a persecuted political dissident — barely a week after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic gulag — on account of the numerous criminal charges he faces for things like plotting to overturn the last election. The conference featured a January 6 themed pinball machine in its exhibition hall. Attendees wearing shirts bearing the face of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by police while breaking into the House chamber, were a common sight. False claims about the 2020 election were embedded into the very ethos of the event.
Multiple CPAC attendees had served jail time for their roles in January 6 and speakers served as apologists for what happened — ranging from Jeffrey Clark, the former Trump administration official who tried to create a legal justification to overturn a presidential election, to Tom Fitton, the right wing media personality who mourned Babbitt on stage as a martyr.
And the three-day event culminated with Trump’s speech, which opened with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance interspersed with a version of the Star Spangled Banner sung by those arrested for their role attacking the Capitol — or, as Trump called them, hostages.
Unlike an average Trump rally, attendees had to nominally pay to get into CPAC. And, unlike CPACs of the past, there was no other draw. Less than a dozen congressional Republicans attended an event that had once been a showcase for ambitious conservatives. Further, despite the fact that the National Governors Association was holding winter meetings only miles away in Washington D.C., the only sitting governor to attend was Kristi Noem, who is a contender in the Trump veepstakes, and used the event to tout her bona fides as a MAGA diehard compared to other vice presidential hopefuls who had been disloyal enough to even consider running for president against him.
There were no Trump skeptics. There was no corporate presence, unless you counted a business that sold silver infused toothbrushes or www.magahammocks.com. The professional political operatives who once treated the event as a virtual trade convention were nowhere to be found. The conference has become more international, but by featuring Trump’s fellow travelers from abroad. This year’s speaker list felt like a Steve Bannon dream team of figures from the foreign populist right, including Argentinian President Javier Milei, Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele and, for some reason, former British prime minister Liz Truss.
It remains to be seen whether next year’s CPAC will celebrate, mourn, or deny the 2024 presidential election results.
