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It was Sunday night at CPAC and everyone was waiting for the big star, the recent election loser and former President Donald J. Trump charged twice. The Loyalists with their Confederate flags were perched outside by the palm trees; trucks with “JANUARY 6 MEETING!” stamped on the side sped past the conference doors; Terrifying videos of “Antifa Going International” were playing on the big screen. Everyone was getting a little nervous. It had been over an hour since Don had appeared on stage, was everything okay? Had it been hit by a Jewish space laser? Melania had turned him to stone with a particularly withering look?
Then all of a sudden, an hour and 10 minutes late, there it was. With the energy of a great “aging rock star going through the greatest hits of his final tour,” he crossed the stage like an alien who has only read the theory of human movement and passionately embraced the flag. I can’t help but get a little foggy when doing a callback like that. Remember the days of injecting bleach for Covid? Remember that nonsense about making Mexico pay for the wall? Remember when he said that he probably could have stopped 9/11? Happy times.
And boy did he play the greatest hits tonight. “The wall helped us a lot.” “Dangerous predators and vile coyotes” cross the border by “millions.” The “China virus” made him lose the election (except he didn’t actually lose), because “actually, as you know, they just lost the White House, but it’s one of those, but who knows, who knows, maybe I even decide to beat them a third time, okay? “
There was a “chain migration” and terrorist grandmothers who came to the United States with their children. There were “globalists.” There were vaccines for which Number 45 decided to take personal credit: “Any other president would have taken at least five years,” by the way. The Second Amendment is “threatened.” He is angry that “they” went to Iraq “but they didn’t keep the oil.” Wind power “is bad for the environment and kills birds and rots and rusts everywhere.” The Democrats want to “defund the police.” “The dead are voting” and the election was “rigged.” “Cancel culture” and “fake media” are killing free speech. “Space force!”
“Biden is not cool with energy,” Trump declared at one point, which is quite a surprising phrase when you think about it. “He wants windmills, windmills,” he continued, “but windmills don’t work when you need them!” While I suspect this was a reference to a debunked conspiracy theory about winter storms in Texas, I also love it as a standalone statement from an angry grandpa who just moved into a beachside retirement community in Florida. Why don’t windmills work when you need them? Who moved the beach ball from under my lounger? Why does sand stick to my toes like this? I don’t know, grandpa, but I made you another cup of covfefe, so please stop hitting my hand like that.
What I do admire about Trump, however, is his unmatched ability to squeeze the last drops of the narcissistic lemon. “We love you,” chanted the adoring crowd, who had previously posed with a literal golden statue of the former president for non-ironic photographs. (I always find the golden statues to be a good sign, psychologically speaking. Whenever you go out for a beer after your friend just broke up with his ex and has been commissioned with a huge golden statue of him and keeps yelling about how ” LOOKING AHEAD, that’s when you know they’ve really gotten over it).
“Did someone say that to Ronald Reagan?” Trump demanded almost immediately, when the chant of “We love you” began. “You know, I mean, this country really liked Reagan. But no one had heard that chant before. I was at a rally with people singing ‘We love you’ and I asked someone, ‘Has anyone had that song before?’ And he said, ‘No, we’ve never heard anything like that.’ Yeah that’s Donald J. Trump walking himself into a Bad Girls-Is it the posthumous rivalry with Reagan over who is most popular at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and what about it?
I’ve always thought Trump looked more than a little like Regina George – he’s blond, mean, he’s in top physical condition for a 19-year-old (at least according to his personal physician), and he has a Burn Book meant to discredit his old closest friends turned into newly acquired enemies. Standing in front of a big screen promising “AMERICA WITHOUT CANCELED,” he released a list of enemies tonight: Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Tom Rice, Anthony Gonzales, “the warmonger Liz Cheney.” “The Democrats are vicious,” he said for good measure. “Evil? Well, there is evil there, well, they are vicious, intelligent and always stick together.”
The speech was full of exaggerated lines, but by the time we hit the 90-minute mark, you could tell that both the announcer and the audience were losing steam. “We should have a reason to vote absentee!” he yelled, before immediately turning his head to the side and muttering, “He has to have a reason,” like his own Iago. “Rush is irreplaceable!” He yelled randomly later, but since he hadn’t mentioned radio host Limbaugh for about 20 minutes except in his own head, what most of us heard was “Irreplaceable Russia” (reaction was silent, to say the least) .
“We have to succeed. We have to have the win, ”he added in a choppy whisper near the end, which was more than a little unnerving. At one point, he seemed to scream to death from the heat of the universe, something I’ve also thought about during some of his longer speeches.
Of course, criticisms of Joe Biden appeared once or twice, but they were rare compared to the blows made by the former president to members of his own party. “He said that because he really didn’t know what was going on,” he said of Biden twice in a row, leaning heavily on the “Senile Joe” strategy that never paid off during the election cycle. Now let’s be honest: Trump-Biden debates often were Like watching two bald men fighting over a comb, but at least Biden didn’t yell at the crowd during his unveiling that he’s a sexier version of JFK and they know it.
Were there any surprises from Donald tonight? Not really. He almost announced a race in 2024, but it is far from guaranteed that he would get the nomination. He asked his followers for more donations. He poked fun at the election for about 35 minutes, repeating well-worn conspiracy lines about the 3 a.m. vote dumps in Georgia and secret interventions by Democrats. The last hardcore fans held on to the end, their novelty hats from past concerts perched on their heads and frayed, nodding to the rhythm of the tunes they have come to know so well. But this felt much more like an ending than a beginning, a push for the final album rather than a bold new direction. When he finally left the stage toYMCA With a low energy fist pump, I couldn’t help but feel like CPAC was fan service at its peak for Donald. At some level, this 74-year-old man lost his job during the pandemic and now he probably wants to recline by the sea with a properly functioning windmill in peace. I know they mean well, but can the evangelical worshipers of Donald’s golden calf please leave the poor man?
