President Donald Trump on Saturday described the chaotic first month of his new administration as nothing short of liberating the United States from the tyranny of a Democratic-led government that had pushed too far to empower minorities and encourage immigration as he spoke to an adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Speaking at the end of the fourth and final day of the annual event in Maryland, Trump bragged about the narrow election victory in last year’s election, which he called “too big to rig” and said his win over Vice President Kamala Harris had “achieved the great liberation of America.”
“We’re liberating our country right now. We’re doing all these things that you’re reading about. We’re liberating our country,” he said.
Trump recalled how he’d first spoken at CPAC 14 years earlier, when after spending his life as a prominent Democratic donor he began courting celebrity in Republican political circles by spreading a racist lie about the citizenship of then-president Barack Obama, the first and thus far only non-white person to serve as President of the United States.
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He noted that he’d won that year’s CPAC straw poll of potential presidential candidates and suggested that was how he’d decided to run for president in the first place.
“I didn’t know anything about a straw poll. They took this big straw poll, and I won by like 27 points. And I figured, you know, that’s good. Maybe I should keep doing it. And I did and I became president,” he said.
Trump’s grip on the party has only grown. Before he took the stage, Jim McLaughlin, Trump’s campaign pollster, showed the results of the straw poll, which revealed that Trump had a 99 percent approval rating.
His remarks, delivered just one month and two days after he was sworn in for the first non-consecutive served by an American president in more than a century, were largely self-congratulatory and denigrating of his predecessor, Joe Biden, of whom he unfavorably compared to the late 39th president Jimmy Carter, who died last year at age 100.
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The president surmised that Carter must have “passed away a happy man” because Biden was “the worst,” leaving a mess that he is now charged with “cleaning up.”
“Every single thing he touched turned to s**t, okay? Everything. It’s true,” Trump said.
As he continued, Trump singled out for praise a succession of far-right leaders who’d flocked to the annual confab as a result of American Conservative Union boss Matt Schlapp’s efforts to build an international alliance of authoritarian, anti-liberal parties under the CPAC banner.
Among the international figures he name-checked were Argentinian president Javier Milei, Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Polish President Andrzej Duda, the latter of whom Trump sat down with for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the conference.
Throughout the four-day conference, young conservative men decked out in black “Make America Great Again” hats. Defendants whom Trump pardoned for their actions during the January 6 riot four years ago took selfies with fans. A handful of them stood in the ballroom chanting “J6” and thanked Trump for giving them back their freedom.
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Enrique Tarrio, the former head of the Proud Boys, took selfies with people outside the ballroom.
Throughout his address, people chanted “U.S.A.” in the packed ballroom at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. People remained on their feet from the beginning of the sound system playing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.”
For the CPAC leadership, it was a vindication. American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes introduced Trump, saying they had chosen to stick with him and not pave the way for another Republican to take the mantle in the years following his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
“We knew in our hearts, we knew in our souls that there was only one man ordained to do this most impossible job,” he said.
Democrats have criticized Trump’s hiring of Elon Musk to run the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. But during his speech, Trump praised the X and SpaceX executive’s slashing of federal spending, rattling off programs Musk has halted.
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The president, who frequently spends days at a time working from his Florida home in between leisurely games of golf, echoed a line frequently used by the world’s wealthiest man when he claimed the remote work policies implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic had been “a scam” and baselessly claimed that federal workers, who are legally barred from outside employment, were taking advantage of remote work policies to hold second jobs.
He said the 75,000 workers who’d accepted a dubious buyout offer from Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” had done so to avoid having to disclose their illicit outside employment.
“One of the reasons they’re leaving is because they don’t want to have to show that. And we’re demanding to see that information. How many jobs have you had? Who paid you while you were working for the government?” he said.
“We’ve escorted the radical left bureaucrats out of the building and locked the doors behind them. We’ve gotten rid of thousands.”
Turning to the matter of the three-year-old Russian war on Ukraine, Trump said his goal in negotiating an end to the war through negotiations that have thus far excluded Ukraine’s western-aligned government is to “get the money back” that America had contributed to Kyiv’s defense in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade.
He claimed that European nations had contributed far less to Ukraine than the U.S. because the U.S. had “a stupid, incompetent president and administration” under Biden, and said he wants Ukraine to “give us something for all of the money that we put up.”
The “something” Trump alluded to is likely access to over 50 percent of Ukraine’s mineral wealth under the terms of a deal that has thus far been rejected by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Zelensky in recent days, calling the democratically-elected leader a “dictator” and threatening to pull U.S. support for his country’s defense.
“We’re going to get our money back because it’s not it’s not fair. It’s just not fair, and we will see,” he said.
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