This is the second in a series of articles in which senior staff of The Dartmouth Review comment on their visit to CPAC in Orlando as members of the media.
Yesterday evening at 7:10pm, former President Donald Trump sauntered out onto the CPAC stage, where he was greeted by an eruption of cheering and bellowing that demonstrated, beyond any shadow of a doubt, his continuing, immense popularity in the Grand Old Party. CPAC has long been considered a portal that offers a clear glimpse into the hearts and minds of the Republican base, and Trump’s monumental reception at the conference only further indicated that he remains the dominating force in the party as it heads into the 2022 midterms.
Once the initial cheering had subsided, Trump began his speech by acknowledging and thanking various Republicans who had spoken at CPAC in the preceding days. In so doing, he evinced a clear commitment to the party as a whole, departing from the self-centered approach he has taken in previous high-profile speeches. While he did go on to stress that the 2020 election was “rigged,” his evocation of a commitment to the party remained a central element to his roughly 1½-hour speech. To this end, Trump’s promotion of the importance that Republicans reclaim Congress in 2022, and in effect his refusal to subordinate the Republican Party to his own political interests, was to my mind the hallmark of his speech, easily displacing lamentations about 2020 or teases of 2024. (Note, though, that most media avoid this and instead emphasize divisions in the Republican Party. Take this article from ABC, for instance, which at least nominally suggests that Trump did not mention 2022.) I imagine that the former president has been receiving excellent guidance from informed and intelligent advisors, who recognize that reclaiming Congress in the midterms is critical to halting the Biden agenda—something which all Republicans support. Moreover, taking back Congress is not a distraction but rather an essential step towards winning the White House in 2024, should Trump decide to run.
Trump spent much time discussing the host of current problems which plague the country and world, and he proved a cogent and convincing orator as he reiterated that blame lies squarely at the feet of the Biden administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress. He emphasized that the first step in rectifying these myriad problems would be electing Republican majorities to the House and Senate in 2022. Addressing the most current of these problems, Trump compellingly declared that Putin was inspired to invade Ukraine because of the weakness which he saw in President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan last August.
“I stand as the only president of the 21st century on whose watch Russia did not invade another country,” Trump added, to deafening cheers and applause. Trump left no doubt in any attendee’s mind that, were he the president, Putin would not have invaded Ukraine. This is a sentiment that is broadly shared by the general public, according to a poll released Friday by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) / Harris, which found that 62 percent of Americans believe Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president.
On a side note, I found Trump’s frequent castigation of the media particularly entertaining. Pointing towards the media section in which we at The Dartmouth Review were standing, he made on multiple occasions such humorous asides as “that’s a lot of fake news, look at all of those cameras!” At these moments, we found it hilarious when many in the crowd stood up, faced our section, and loudly booed.
While most of the reporters and cameramen found this amusing and good-naturedly laughed along with the gag (many were from conservative outlets), at several moments two Washington Post reporters in front of us looked as if they were about to break down in tears. Eventually, one of these men turned to his colleague, said, “I can’t take it anymore,” and walked out of the room.
Trump successfully outlined a Republican platform for the midterms and 2024, and I thought he seemed very comfortable and tempered over the course of the speech. Trump didn’t target anyone in the Republican Party save for Mitch McConnell, and I actually felt that this was one of his more unifying speeches. Indeed, Trump seemed to recognize that it is by focusing on the many failures of President Biden and the Democrats that the Republicans will be able to win back Congress and the White House. This, of course, did not preclude him from periodically referencing 2020 and focusing on election integrity efforts going forward.
(On this subject, I think many in the media often fail to distinguish election integrity as the separate matter which it is. Republicans have advocated the employment of photo ID verification at the polls for decades, and the left is hardly in a position to categorize this as some newfound, somehow radical quest.)
However, it is important to recognize that Trump was highly effective in focusing the majority of his speech on series of terrible decisions which Biden and the Democrats have made. One of the most crucial and pertinent of these, I think, dealt with pipelines: Trump highlighted his imposition of sanctions in 2019 on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would transport natural gas to Germany from Russia. The pipeline would make Germany energy-dependent on Russia and thereby endanger the energy security and national security of the European Union and, by extension, the United States. Nevertheless, Biden’s administration lifted sanctions on the pipeline and allowed its construction to resume, and Senate Democrats filibustered a Republican effort to impose additional sanctions. Incredibly, this came at the same time that Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have helped the United States attain energy independence. This is, of course, an important progression of events to highlight given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the recent soaring gas prices. (Also of note, it was only just days ago, upon Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that Biden finally reimposed sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.)
Finally, I thought that Trump was successful in explaining that putting America first does not inherently mean putting everyone else in the world last. It simply means that American leaders are indebted primarily to the American people, and this, Trump said, is something which the Biden administration and Democrats do not understand.
Very well written!