CPAC celebrates Trump as if he didn’t lose in 2020
CPAC #CPAC
ORLANDO, Florida — Within the sunny confines of the Conservative Political Action Conference, it’s as if former President Donald Trump did not fail to win reelection in November. He is simply not the president right now.
It has been nearly four weeks since President Biden evicted Trump from the White House. Prominent Republicans who addressed conservative activists Friday at CPAC acknowledged as much, delivering a series of stirring calls to action to oppose the Democratic agenda in Washington, D.C. But missing from the program was any reassessment of Trump’s defeat and any role he played in the loss the GOP’s majority in the Senate in two subsequent runoff elections in Georgia.
The gathering is unfolding as a celebration of Trump’s stewardship of the GOP. The Republicans who actually won reelection last fall, and still wield power on Capitol Hill, are being cast as the problem impeding the party’s progress.
“The Republican Party is being reborn thanks to President Trump,” Kimberly Guilfoyle, girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. and finance chairwoman of the Trump 2020 campaign, told the crowd. “We bid a farewell to the weak-kneed, the spineless, and the cowards that are posing in D.C. and pretending that they’re working for the people.”
“The best is yet to come,” Guilfoyle added, punctuating her remarks with a line from her August speech to the Republican convention that renominated the now-former president.
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Trump is the first Republican nominee in a generation to lose Arizona and Georgia, albeit narrowly. His ouster after one term — he was the first president sent packing after just four years since George H.W. Bush in 1992 — culminated a tumultuous tenure that saw Republicans lose control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. At CPAC, nobody is holding Trump responsible for the Democratic takeover in Washington, D.C.
The culprit is massive voter fraud across several states, a topic receiving the lion’s share of attention from speakers and panel discussions on the main stage here at a Hyatt Regency in Orlando. When Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a leading Trump ally, raised the issue of his objection to Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes during the Jan. 6 certification of the election in Congress, he received one of the most sustained standing ovations of the day.
“I just want to say to those people who say to us: ‘Oh, you’re the past; your moment has passed. It’s over, it’s Joe Biden’s America now.’ I just want to say, ‘We’re not the past, we’re the future,’” said Hawley, a populist mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2024 — if Trump does not run.
The support for Trump at CPAC has not abated an inch since he took the Republican Party and the conservative movement by storm nearly six years ago when he initiated his first campaign for president.
Everywhere, conferencegoers were decked out in Trump garb and paraphernalia — some of which sent the distinctive message that they do not believe Biden was elected legitimately. One man wore a baseball cap with the words “Trump won” stitched across the front; another donned a T-shirt that read: “Biden is not president.” Trump garnered 74.2 million votes in November, more than any incumbent president in history, as his supporters never tire of pointing out.
The part they tend to leave out, or simply do not believe, is that Biden won quite a few more votes — 81.3 million, the most ever by a presidential candidate. Trump relinquished power on Jan. 20, leaving the nation’s capital for his new home base in Palm Beach, Florida. But as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a likely 2024 contender, noted in a fiery speech to CPAC Friday morning, the former president “ain’t going anywhere.”
“President Trump is going to keep playing a key role in our party,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, yet another possible president candidate in 2024, said. “His agenda was the right agenda, and it’s the agenda that our voters want our candidates and elected officials to pursue.”
Trump is scheduled to address CPAC on Sunday, his first remarks before a live audience since Biden was inaugurated.
Tags: News, Campaigns, 2022 Elections, 2024 Elections, CPAC, Donald Trump
Original Author: David M. Drucker
Original Location: CPAC celebrates Trump as if he didn’t lose in 2020