In his first major public appearance since leaving office, former President Donald Trump used a lie-filled speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., to vilify President Biden’s administration, showed no remorse for the Jan. 6 insurrection, repeated his lies about election fraud, and signaled that he would run for president again in 2024. His comments at CPAC demonstrates that the Republican Party is still very much a party centered around Trump.
There is no doubt anymore that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, and that Joe Biden is officially the 46th President of the United States. Lies about election fraud have now been debunked and rejected by the courts. Yet, Trump still continued to push baseless claims that the election was rigged and he was the rightful winner, saying that “it’s not possible” he lost and declared that he won the 2020 election.
Despite being the first incumbent president to lose reelection, the House, and the Senate in his first term, the GOP shows no sign of wavering away from him. Many Republicans are still fixated on pushing claims about election-rigging and fraud, and those that are not pro-Trump loyalists received a staunch warning from the former president.
“The RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) that we’re surrounded with will destroy the Republican Party and the American worker and will destroy our country itself,” said Trump, vowing to back and elect pro-Trump Republicans. “Get rid of them all,” Trump said, after naming every Republican who voted to impeach him. He especially singled out Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for not being loyal to him, calling Cheney a “warmonger” and falsely claiming he helped get McConnell reelected last November. Cheney and McConnell had been critical of Trump’s election fraud claims and his role in the Capitol riot, with the former even voting to impeach Trump in the House. Cheney is currently the third most-powerful Republican in the House.
The speakers at CPAC spoke hardly of Biden’s agenda, or his $1.9 trillion stimulus bill currently making its way through Congress (in which every single Republican voted against in the House), or other Democratic policies, unlike CPACs held in years past. There was no discussion of a party platform, no opposition to the Democrats’ agenda, and hardly any interest was demonstrated in uniting against the Democrats. Rather, this year’s CPAC was more of a three-day-long Trump rally. All the speakers were Trump loyalists, there was hardly any wavering from the discussion about centering around Trump, and people were generally united in their backing of the former populist one-term president.
The exception was Trump himself, who spoke at length about his grievances about the Biden administration and lashed out at the president’s stance on issues from immigration to foreign policy.
With Trump remaining so influential within his party, he boldly declared that he is “not starting a new party,” putting rest to the rumors that he was planning to form a pro-Trump “Patriot Party.” Clearly, there is no benefit for Trump to form a new party, since so much of his party is still so loyal to him.
Trump hinted at running again in 2024, too, after a CPAC straw poll showed Trump winning with 55 percent of the vote, more than twice the runner-up, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a huge Trump loyalist, who got 21 percent of the vote. (In a poll without Trump, DeSantis won.) Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley of Texas and Missouri respective, two pro-Trump senators who worked hard, but failed, to overturn the results of the 2020 election and widely seen to have 2024 ambitions, finished in the low single-digits in the poll.
Trump talked about beating the Democrats for a “third” time should he run in 2024. (Trump has never won the popular vote and only won the Electoral College once, in 2016.) He hinted at himself beating the Democrats in 2024, making it clear that he is definitely going to run again in four years’ time.
Even with his social media megaphone taken away from him, Trump is still able to draw support from the far-right and have Republicans come and support him. In fact, his claims about election-rigging have made it such that 62 percent of CPAC attendees put “election integrity” as the most important issue facing the country. (Again, no substantial election fraud has ever been uncovered in the 2020 election.)
Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, one of the most pro-Trump governors in the nation after DeSantis (she finished after him in the straw poll), positioned herself as a female version of Trump, who gave a staunchly pro-Trump speech littered with anti-lockdown, anti-mask remarks. She attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert and a chief medical adviser to President Biden, and said she never ordered “a single business or church to close” after Fauci had recommended lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19. (Because of that, though, South Dakota saw the second-highest per capita infection and death rates of COVID-19, second only to North Dakota. In a state of 858,000 people, over 112,427 people have been infected with over 1,888 deaths.)
As it currently stands, the GOP is still very much the party of Trump. How well that will hold up in the future though, yet remains to be seen. However, considering the fact that so many states moved away from him on the presidential level, it seems unlikely that clinging on to Trump is a winning strategy. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a senator who voted to impeach Trump, said “if we idolize one person, we will lose.”