Cpac

“We have an elite who have been in power for at least the last 40 years, who fundamentally don’t like western civilization and they wanna destroy it,” said Liz Truss, who was prime minister for 49 days in 2022, as she spoke to a half-full room at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas. It was her third such speech. The Liz Truss who addresses American audiences bears little resemblance to the awkward, growth-obsessed economics nerd who somehow ascended the greasy pole of British politics, only to slide back down at staggering speed. She’s changed her vocabulary – and her talking points. The few attendees of her panel, snappily titled “Europestan: Can Europe Survive?” could hear Truss lambasting “grooming gangs” and “transgender ideology.

National Harbor, Maryland President Donald Trump capstoned a three-day CPAC pep rally with a message of… well, Trump. To be fair, that’s what virtually everybody else at the conference was speaking about too. The ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort was packed. In the build-up members of the Trump administration and world leaders had taken the stage, but make no mistake: the attendees were here to see the president himself. Trump entered to rapturous applause. After his signature move of standing before the podium for the entirety of “God Bless the USA,” he addressed the audience. “We fought through hell together, but in the end, we achieved the great liberation of America,” he said. “Kamala?” Trump asked himself, as if searching for a forgotten memory.

National Harbor, Maryland Elon Musk made a surprise appearance at CPAC Thursday afternoon, where Argentinian president Javier Milei presented him with a chainsaw. “This is a chainsaw for bureaucracy!” Musk said, brandishing it before a whooping crowd. The Department of Government Efficiency chief took to the stage with Newsmax host Rob Schmitt. Musk wore his MAGA hat — “dark gothic MAGA!” as he said — a black jacket and mirror shades, which he kept on for the duration of his appearance. The X CEO called for America to “legalize comedy” and agreed with Schmitt that legacy media companies receiving USAID money from the federal government were becoming “mouthpieces for the state.

The GOP world was stunned last year when a Herschel Walker campaign staffer accused American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp of “pummeling” his crotch. On Tuesday, the Washington Examiner published an article headlined, “CPAC’s Matt Schlapp cleared in assault case, accuser apologizes.” But that's not what happened: the article neglected to mention that a $480,000 settlement was paid to Carlton Huffman through an ACU insurance policy. The last time Cockburn checked, settling out of court is different to exoneration.  The original lawsuit filed by Huffman against Schlapp last year sought more than $9 million in damages. Schlapp attempted to settle for a low-six figure sum last year, but Huffman refused.

“A hurt dog barks.” That’s what Tucker Carlson said as he aired various bits of the 41,000 hours of surveillance video captured at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. If you want to know what the hurt dog sounds like, just listen to Senator Chuck Schumer on March 7: “Rupert Murdoch has a special obligation to stop Tucker Carlson from going on tonight [and] from letting him go on again and again and again [because] our democracy depends on it.” Really, Chuck? Does “our democracy” depend on preventing the American people from seeing what really happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021?

Oxon Hill played host to the muted sounds of MAGA last week. The Conservative Political Action Conference returned from Florida to the Washington, DC exurbs — but the conference was a shadow of its former self. While CPAC has been MAGA territory since 2017, some of Donald Trump’s intra-party foes sensed blood in the water. Perhaps none more so than Perry Johnson. Johnson, a Michigan businessman who was booted from the ballot during his failed 2022 gubernatorial campaign, has announced a long-shot presidential bid that has so far consisted of a cringe ad in the Super Bowl, and a third-place finish in CPAC’s vaunted “straw poll” for president. A number of “Perry Who?” Johnson shirts could be seen around the conference.

Just based on public behavior, you'd think Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis weren't even interested in running for the same office. Trump's approach has been, as is his wont, directly at odds with the traditions of running for office. Normally, a candidate would want to reestablish the sense of a once-and-future political predator building a dominant effort to return to his former job. Consisting of splashy media events like his recent trip to East Palestine, flamboyant social media haranguing, and a campaign operation that has more questions than answers, the Trump show will be on display this week at his old haunting grounds of CPAC. It was the conference that gave him his start in the conservative movement.