The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the main annual gathering of right-wing leaders and activists in the United States, has become the image and likeness of Donald Trump. Years ago, it was considered a space for debate and reflection on conservatism. Not anymore: now it is a competition of praise for the tycoon and his ultra agenda. Among the public – who shell out $295 per ticket and up to $700 for the premium experience – there are people dressed as a wall, t-shirts with Trump's mugshot, caps with the motto Make America Great Again, and devotees of Nayib Bukele, Javier Milei , Nigel Farage, Santiago Abascal and Steve Bannon, also present. And an absolute majority of men, both speakers and attendees, who feel discriminated against by gender policies.
The CPAC motto, Where globalism goes to die, illustrates the character of a movement – increasingly global and consolidated –, the alt-right, which cries out against the "woke drift" of the United Nations and its 2030 agenda, which denies the climate emergency, which maintains that trans women are men, which equates the immigrant with an invader, which aligns itself with the conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement, which has George Soros as its target, who affirms that taxes are "theft", that abortion is murder, and who follows the populist manual to the letter: he distinguishes between "us" (the homeland people) and "them" (the globalist elites, the Deep state, dark forces, evil progressivism and its identity politics).
While the Republicans were celebrating the South Carolina primaries yesterday, the most anticipated speech of this ultra-conservative forum took place in mid-afternoon: Trump, supreme leader of the Republican Party, received the cheers of his parish when he took the main stage, an hour late. from a convention center in National Harbor (Maryland), kissed the flag and addressed the dedicated masses, who remained standing for much of the hour that his speech lasted. His primary rival, Nikki Haley, who was booed during his speech last year, was not invited because she was a "traitor," in the mogul's words.
"The corrupt Joe Biden is the most incompetent president in the history of this great country," said Trump, and held the president responsible for his four criminal charges: "It is something that only happens in third world countries, in banana republics. It is very sad that it is happening in the United States." "The only crime I have committed is defending America from those who want to destroy it," he said.
As usual, he focused his speech on the southern border, where "criminals and rapists enter," and promised to "finish the wall" and "the largest deportation in history." In addition, he referred to November 5, the day of the presidential elections, as "the day of liberation" of the "hostages of January 6", in reference to those accused of the assault on the Capitol, and promised "revenge" against the "corrupt and liars who rule this country."
The first edition of CPAC, in 1974, served as a springboard for Ronald Reagan's candidacy. In this election year, five decades later, no one has questioned who the Republican contender should be in November: attention was focused on Trump's future running mate if he reaches the White House. In fact, attendees could vote in a survey among 17 options for vice president, ignoring that the Republican primaries have not yet decided their presidential candidate.
Up to five rumored candidates to assume the vice presidency had their space, and turned their speeches into a contest of praise for the president: the leader of the Republican conference in Congress, Elise Stefanik, Senator J.D. Vance, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake and former Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The winner of the informal CPAC poll was Noem, with 15% of the votes.
In its 50th anniversary, CPAC has sought to become international. It has included interventions by emerging stars of Spanish-speaking neoconservatism, such as the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, whose speech was acclaimed on Thursday by an audience sympathetic to his strong hand and with dozens of Salvadorans who agreed, in interviews with La Vanguardia, in identify him as "the best president in history."
"I come to tell you that globalism has already died in El Salvador," Bukele said in fluent English, and alerted the future US president - without naming Trump or Biden - of the "dark forces" that "already "They are taking over the country" and "they are going to conspire against it." He went so far as to affirm that, unlike the North American country, in El Salvador "there is democracy" because there "we do not persecute the opposition."
Vox leader Santiago Abascal made his CPAC debut on Friday with a half-hour speech on the main stage. Emulating Trump's motto, he declared that we must make "the West great again" and warned against "socialism and globalism", which "rule against the people" with their climate and gender policies and with their "suicidal impositions of the 2030 agenda".
"Your green future is actually a red future," he said, with allusions to the rural protests in Spain and Europe, and called for the union of defenders of the "values in crisis of the West," such as "the homeland, the freedom, reason, the faith of our parents, the family, property, sovereignty, democracy and the limitation of power." His intervention ended with the shout of "Long live Spain!", Emerging from the dozen Vox supporters located in the second row, who raised flags of the country, the party and against the 2030 agenda.
After Trump, and a brief speech by Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the former president of Brazil, it was the turn of the Argentine president, Javier Milei, who, true to his style, gave a technical speech that seemed more like an economics class than a political allegation. The topic of the day: "how neoclassical economics and its vision of market failures are functional to socialism," he announced at the beginning. In a monotonous and lackluster intervention due to the interruptions of the English translation between phrases - unlike Abascal, who had no translation - he cited Shumpeter, Pareto and Hayek, among others, and ended up defining himself as MAGA: "Make "Argentina Great Again".
Trump said these same four words in the greeting between the two prior to the speech, captured by a video published on X by the magnate's advisor, Dan Scavino.
"Do not endorse regulation. Do not endorse the idea of market failures. Do not allow the advancement of the murderous agenda and do not allow yourself to be carried away by the siren song of social justice," Milei claimed. "I come from a country that bought all those stupid ideas and went from being one of the richest in the world to 140th. Don't give up your freedom, fight for it, because if not it will lead you to misery."
Outside of the main set, Trump's strategist during his term, Steve Bannon, had an almost permanent stage at the entrance of the venue for his War Room podcast. He predicted that the MAGA movement "will rule the United States for the next 50 years" and assured that the magnate "will be remembered as the best president since Abraham Lincoln."
In a panel presented by himself, another of the Trumpist gurus, Jack Posobiec, promised to "overthrow democracy" to the applause of a fired-up audience. "We didn't go all the way on January 6, but we'll work hard to get rid of it," he said, referring to Biden, backed by an "amen" from Bannon.
Also missing from the event was one of Trump's greatest allies in the House of Representatives, Matt Gaetz, who led the boycott of the previous speaker of the chamber, Kevin McCarthy, and has contributed to making the legislature ungovernable. The title of his talk, Burning down the House, couldn't do it more justice. He argued that the United States should not continue providing foreign aid to Ukraine without first cutting the "inflated" federal budget, alluding to the law stalled in Congress for military assistance to Ukraine, and went so far as to defend that "we must remove "US from the UN and to the UN from the US."
This was the general tone of the twenty daily interventions in the four days of CPAC, a conference that no longer admits opinions contrary to the master and lord of American and global neoconservatism: the magnate, former president, accused, convicted and candidate Donald Trump.
