The main annual forum of the American right has Donald Trump as the absolute protagonist, and, before the former Republican president himself closed the proceedings on Saturday evening, his family mobilized the Republican bases with a clear message in the perspective of the presidential elections in 2024. On the stage of the Center for Conventions at the National Harbor, on the outskirts of Washington, where between March 1 and 4 the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is held, are the son of the former president, Donald Trump Jr., and the girlfriend of the junior and former adviser to Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, as well as Lara Trump, the wife of the other son of the American billionaire, Eric, and former adviser to the former occupant of the White House. “It’s like we’re in a MAGA country,” declared Donald Trump Jr. in front of an ecstatic crowd, although not too numerous. The MAGA logo, Make America Great Again, the slogan that Trump used in his first election campaign, is proudly displayed at this forum; it is ubiquitous on T-shirts, stickers, and caps, as well as in the speeches of the participants. “We need to start voting with our wallets; help those who help us,” said Donald Trump Jr., who is the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, his father’s business concern. In his opinion, the USA needs a president “who is not the property of other people”, because the administration of Democrat Joe Biden has made the country “unrecognizable”: “And it will keep it that way if we don’t defend ourselves and we say ‘enough!'”.

According to the life partner of Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, the only objective of the Democrats is to “destroy” people’s lives. “We will say ‘no’ to open borders, to chaos, to attacks on US energy independence, to capitulation to environmentalist alarmists, to reckless spending, and to turning our schools into an indoctrination tool for the radical left,” she said. “Our fight to save America has just begun. Are we ready to remove Joe Biden from the White House? I can’t think of anyone better suited than my father-in-law to be the 47th president of the United States,” Lara Trump also declared. In her intervention, Lara Trump insisted that she has confidence in the victory of Donald Trump, who was president from 2017 to 2021: “We must not forget that six years ago, no one believed that Donald Trump would become president. People believed that—it’s a joke, a publicity stunt. And when he succeeded, the same people went to great lengths to get rid of him and stand in his way. And even so, look at what he accomplished.” Strategist Steve Bannon pleaded on Friday at CPAC for the former president’s candidacy for the nomination of the Republican Party for the 2024 presidential election. A CPAC that ended up being an almost exclusively Trumpist convention, under the patronage of this controversial political advisor, comments EFE. Bannon spoke at CPAC to launch a plea in favor of Trump while also criticizing the leadership of the Republican Party. He appreciated that there are “good and decent people” running for next year’s Republican primaries, among whom he mentioned the former US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, who has already announced that she will run for the party’s nomination, and possible presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, the governor of the state of Florida, and Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state. “That’s all well and good, but we don’t have time for on-the-job training compared to a man who has only been learning for four years” in the White House, Bannon said, referring to Trump, whose speech was sprinkled with applause from the participants. Bannon said that not only is Trump the de facto leader of the Republican Party, but “he is the leader of the most powerful political movement in US history”, an allusion to MAGA. Bannon also criticized conservative “oligarchs”, such as the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, Mitch Connell, who does not participate in CPAC. In the rest of his speech, Bannon mixed conspiracy theories with falsehoods and quickly addressed a wide range of topics: he spoke about the “most dangerous moment in history” after the Second World War, about the disputes between Democrats and Republicans on the US debt ceiling, and about the threat posed by the “Ayatollahs of Iran”. This CPAC conference represents Bannon’s return to the public stage after his troubles with the judiciary. He was sentenced in October 2022 to four months in prison for refusing to cooperate with the now-disbanded legislative committee investigating the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters. Among the notable absences from CPAC among Republican Party heavyweights are conservative congressional leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, Ron DeSantis, and Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence. The “icing on the cake” at CPAC, a conference that some called “the Woodstock of Trump’s supporters,” will be the speech delivered by Donald Trump himself on Saturday. And former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, nicknamed “Trump from the Tropics”, will give a speech. The expulsion of a white supremacist for anti-Semitism and accusations of sexual abuse against one of the organizers cast a bad light on CPAC. The CPAC sessions took place these days in the presence of the “elephant in the room” that no one dares talk about: the allegations against the president of the conference, Matt Schlapp, and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp. Two days before the start of the conference, the couple was sued by a former employee for alleged sexual assault and defamation. The complaint is based on alleged facts dating back to October 2022, when Matt Schlapp allegedly touched and made indecent proposals to a female employee of former Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker. According to The Washington Post, Schlapp, the leader of the American Conservative Union group and the organizer of CPAC, is under internal investigation and accused of maintaining a “toxic” work environment. Added to this is another controversy involving Matt Schlapp, who expelled white supremacist Nick Fuentes from CPAC for allegedly making anti-Semitic comments. However, Fuentes is no stranger to controversy, making headlines in November 2022 after having dinner with Trump and rapper Kanye West, who also made anti-Semitic comments, at the former president’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, a meeting criticized by some groups of the Republican Party.

By Paul Bumman