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      Scandal grips this year’s CPAC event: Politics Weekly America podcast

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      Jonathan Freedland and Tara Setmayer discuss why some high profile Republicans – and even Fox News – are avoiding this year’s gathering at the Conservative Political Action Conference

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      Archive: CNN, MSNBC, News Nation, CSPAN, AP Listen to Today in Focus episode on what happened in East Palestine, Ohio. Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts. More

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      House ethics committee opens investigation into George Santos – as it happened

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      The House ethics committee has opened an investigation into George Santos, the Republican lawmaker who admitted to lying about his résumé in his campaign to represent part of New York City’s suburbs in Congress’s lower chamber.A statement from the committee’s GOP chair Michael Guest and Democratic ranking member Susan Wild said the panel voted to create a subcommittee to look into alleged misconduct by Santos. They specified it would investigate “whether Representative George Santos may have: engaged in unlawful activity with respect to his 2022 congressional campaign; failed to properly disclose required information on statements filed with the House; violated federal conflict of interest laws in connection with his role in a firm providing fiduciary services; and/or engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual seeking employment in his congressional office.”Republican Dave Joyce will chair the subcommittee, alongside Democratic ranking member Susan Wild. They’ll be joined by Republican John Rutherford and Democrat Glenn Ivey.In his defense against civil lawsuits connected to the January 6 insurrection, Donald Trump is getting no help from Joe Biden’s justice department, which told an appeals court it thinks cases against the former president over the violent attack should be allowed to go ahead. Meanwhile, the House ethics committee began its widely expected investigation into George Santos, the New York Republican who lied and lied and lied.Here’s what else happened today:
      Ron DeSantis outlined how he could take policies implemented in Florida national, and cause “a complete upheaval of the deep state,” as he put it.
      Matt Schlapp, organizer of the Conservative Political Action Conference, does not want to talk about allegations he groped a Republican campaign staffer.
      Mike Pence is among Republicans giving CPAC a miss, and his (mutual) dislike for Trump is probably a big reason why.
      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also in trouble with Congress’s ethics watchdog, though not yet as much as Santos.
      Biden supports statehood for Washington DC – to an extent.
      Joe Biden and most Democrats in Congress support turning the majority of Washington DC – America’s only federal district – into the 51st state. But that’s not stopping the president and some Democratic senators from joining with the GOP to stop Washington’s city council from implementing a new criminal code:I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule – but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections – such as lowering penalties for carjackings.If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did – I’ll sign it.— President Biden (@POTUS) March 2, 2023
      Washington DC has a unique relationship with Congress, which can vote to override decisions made by its 13-member city council – currently composed of 11 Democratic members and two independents.Late last year, the council approved a new criminal code that advocates say represents a long-overdue modernization of its penalties and procedures for lawbreaking. But Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser opposed it, while Republicans in Congress pounced on the law to claim it is indicative of Democrats’ weakness on crime.The city council overrode Bowser’s veto of the measure earlier this year, but the Republicans controlling the House last month voted to block its implementation, and there appears to be enough Democratic votes in the Senate for Republicans to stop its implementation there. Now that Biden has made clear he’ll sign legislation to block the new code, the council’s effort seems dead, at least for now.Today in the Capitol, Joe Biden pulled a Joe Manchin when asked when he planned to run for a second term:Reporter: “When will you announce your reelection, sir?”President Biden: “When I announce it.” pic.twitter.com/UgrsUfjRTj— The Recount (@therecount) March 2, 2023
      But unlike with Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat and frustrater of progressives who has remained coy on if he’d like to remain in the Senate, all signs point to Biden running again.Nina Jankowicz, who resigned last year as director of the homeland security department’s disinformation governance board amid a flurry of threats and conspiracy theories that led to a pause in its operations, is raising money for a lawsuit against Fox News:Fox News lied about me hundreds of times to tens of millions of people. Help me hold them accountable for the harm they do.https://t.co/m7O8m50OPmhttps://t.co/4K7RgedI90— Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) March 2, 2023
      She accuses the network of spreading inaccurate information about her job, which led to threats against herself and her family, and her decision to resign from the government.“I became the young, female, easy-to-attack public face of what Fox pundits were recklessly spinning as ‘men with guns [telling] you to shut up.’ Congressional Republicans and the right-wing media characterized me as an unhinged, partisan, unserious, dangerous fascist, despite my track record of measured, bipartisan work, including testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018 at the GOP chair’s invitation,” Jankowicz wrote on the GoFundMe she set up for the legal effort.“My life has been irrevocably altered because Fox News repeatedly force-fed lies about me to tens of millions of their viewers. Tens of thousands have harassed me online. Hundreds have violently threatened me. I am far from the only American to experience this type of Fox-led hate campaign, and it must stop.”As of the time of this post, Jankowicz had raised $4,435 of the $100,000 she is seeking to cover the cost of the lawsuit she wants to file against Fox News, as well as expenses related to other lawsuits filed against her, a protective order she sought against someone who was harassing her and a subpoena she expects from a Republican-led congressional panel.George Santos is not alone in running afoul of Congress’s ethics watchdogs.Fox News reports the House Office of Congressional Ethics has concluded Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have broke the rules by accepting tickets to New York’s Met Gala two years ago:1) The House Ethics Committee has released a report by the quasi-official “Office of Congressional Ethics” (OCE) on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) March 2, 2023
      2) The OCE (which is NOT the Ethics Committee, but can refer issues to that panel), said it discovered “substantial reason to believe” that Ocasio-Cortez improperly accepted gifts in the form of tickets, et al, in connection with her appearance at the Met Gala in NYC in 2021— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) March 2, 2023
      3) The formal Ethics Committee has NOT launched a formal inquiry into Ocasio-Cortez like it did today with Rep. George Santos (R-NY). But the Ethics Committee is still reviewing Ocasio-Cortez’s actions.— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) March 2, 2023
      Established in 2008, the House Office of Congressional Ethics reviews allegations against lawmakers and forwards their conclusions to the chamber’s ethics committee, which is composed of lawmakers. It’s up to that body to decide whether to act on the report.The House ethics committee has opened an investigation into George Santos, the Republican lawmaker who admitted to lying about his résumé in his campaign to represent part of New York City’s suburbs in Congress’s lower chamber.A statement from the committee’s GOP chair Michael Guest and Democratic ranking member Susan Wild said the panel voted to create a subcommittee to look into alleged misconduct by Santos. They specified it would investigate “whether Representative George Santos may have: engaged in unlawful activity with respect to his 2022 congressional campaign; failed to properly disclose required information on statements filed with the House; violated federal conflict of interest laws in connection with his role in a firm providing fiduciary services; and/or engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual seeking employment in his congressional office.”Republican Dave Joyce will chair the subcommittee, alongside Democratic ranking member Susan Wild. They’ll be joined by Republican John Rutherford and Democrat Glenn Ivey.A showdown is brewing between Bernie Sanders and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who has been accused of frustrating efforts by the company’s employees to unionize. Here’s the latest on the dispute, from the Guardian’s Michael Sainato:Starbucks is under fire over the company’s response to unionization efforts as senator Bernie Sanders threatens to call its chief executive before his committee on alleged labor violations and staff petition for it to end “intimidation” of organizers.Sanders, chairman of the Senate health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee, announced on Wednesday that the committee will be voting on whether to issue a subpoena to compel Starbucks chief Howard Schultz to testify about Starbuck’s federal labor law violations, and to authorize a committee investigation into labor-law violations committed by major corporations.“For nearly a year, I and many of my colleagues in the Senate have repeatedly asked Mr Schultz to respect the constitutional right of workers at Starbucks to form a union and to stop violating federal labor laws,” Sanders said in a press release confirming the 8 March vote.“Mr Schultz has failed to respond to those requests. He has denied meeting and document requests, skirted congressional oversight attempts, and refused to answer any of the serious questions we have asked. Unfortunately, Mr Schultz has given us no choice but to subpoena him.”The move came after 44 employees at Starbucks headquarters in Seattle and 22 additional anonymous employees signed on to a petition calling on the company to reverse a return-to-office mandate and “to commit to a policy of neutrality and respect federal labor laws by agreeing to follow fair election principles, and allow store partners, whether pro- or anti-union, to decide for themselves, free from fear, coercion, and intimidation.”Starbucks condemned for ‘intimidation’ of US union organizersRead moreA Republican US congressman from Texas reportedly faces censure from his state party this weekend, because he:
      Voted in support of same-sex marriage.
      Voted for a gun safety measure introduced in response to the Uvalde elementary school shooting, in which 19 children and two adults were killed.
      Voted against the Republican House majority’s rules package.
      The San Antonio Report details proceedings against Tony Gonzales, who won the 23rd congressional district in 2020. It said he did not immediately comment.For the San Antonio Report (tagline, “Nonprofit Journalism for an Informed Community”), Andrea Drusch describes other points on which Gonzales has angered his own party, including “numerous complaints about [his] approach to border security, such as repeating ‘the Democratic canard that supporters of border security are anti-immigrant’”.A censure vote is expected on Saturday, Drusch reports, adding: “If the resolution is successful, members of the [State Republican Executive Committee] would be able to choose between several options to punish Gonzales, according to party rules.“They could simply discourage Gonzales from running for reelection as a Republican, or they could lift the restriction on party officials campaigning against him, as is required for current GOP officeholders.“Perhaps of greater consequence, they also could prohibit Gonzales from receiving financial help from the party.”Among expert reactions to the news that the Department of Justice says Donald Trump does not have immunity in civil cases relating to January 6, this from Norm Eisen, a Brookings fellow, CNN analyst and former ethics tsar in the Obama White House, is interesting:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}DoJ has just filed a brief rejecting Trump’s claim (in a civil case) that he is absolutely immune from legal accountability [over his] attempted coup … [The brief is] important in its own right – and because signals weakness of his likely defense in the coming criminal case in Georgia.The case in Georgia concerns Trump’s attempted election subversion there. Indictments are believed to be imminent, not least because the foreperson of the grand jury which considered the case dropped very large hints last week.‘A big freaking deal’: the grand jury that investigated Trump election pressureRead moreDana Nessel, the Democratic attorney general of Michigan, said earlier she was among targets of a man charged with threatening to kill state officials who are Jewish.“The FBI has confirmed I was a target of the heavily armed defendant in this matter,” Nessel wrote. “It is my sincere hope that the federal authorities take this offense just as seriously as my Hate Crimes and Domestic Terrorism Unit takes plots to murder elected officials.”The Associated Press reports that Jack Carpenter III, of Tipton, Michigan, tweeted on 17 February that he was returning to his home state to “carry out the punishment of death to anyone” who is Jewish in Michigan government “if they don’t leave, or confess, and now that kind of problem. Because I can legally do that, right?”According to the criminal complaint against Carpenter, he also declared a new country – “New Israel” – around his home.He was arrested in Texas four days later. According to prosecutors, when Carpenter was “arrested in his vehicle, [officers] found approximately a half-dozen firearms and ammunition”.The complaint against Carpenter did not name any alleged targets.The US justice department has said Donald Trump is not entitled to absolute immunity in civil lawsuits related to the US Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, which he incited in an attempt to stop certification of his election loss to Joe Biden and which is now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides.Trump faces civil cases brought by congressional Democrats and US Capitol police officers who fought his supporters on January 6. His lawyers have urged dismissal. A Washington DC appeals court asked the Department of Justice for its opinion.Trump argued that he could not be sued for statements made before the riot, when he was still president, because presidents enjoy wide-ranging protections when performing their official duties.Government lawyers disagreed, saying in a new court filing: “Speaking to the public on matters of public concern is a traditional function of the presidency, and the outer perimeter of the President’s Office includes a vast realm of such speech.“But that traditional function is one of public communication. It does not include incitement of imminent private violence.“In the United States’ view, such incitement of imminent private violence would not be within the outer perimeter of the Office of the President of the United States.”Trump is the subject of an ongoing Department of Justice investigation, led by the special counsel Jack Smith. The House January 6 committee, which disbanded when Republicans took control after the midterms, made four criminal referrals of Trump to the DoJ.Lawyers for Trump have until 16 March to respond to the DoJ brief about civil cases.Gisele Barreto Fetterman, wife of the Pennsylvania Democratic senator John Fetterman, who remains hospitalised for treatment for depression, has responded to attacks from rightwing figures including the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who claim she has pushed her husband too far.Barreto Fetterman tweeted: “In the worst moments of our lives, women are told it’s their fault. In case you need to hear it today: It’s. Not. Your. Fault. I will keep living and fighting with love. We all need more of it.”She accompanied her message with a link to a Washington Post column by Monica Hesse, under the headline “How Gisele Fetterman became the right wing’s favorite super villain”.Hesse’s column highlights Carlson’s segment on John Fetterman and Joe Biden on Tuesday, in which he said the senator was too ill and the president too old to fill their respective offices.Saying “a woman, a spouse, who loved her husband” would keep him away from campaigns, Carlson called Dr Jill Biden “a ghoulish, power-seeking creep”.His guest, Candace Owens, said: “Absolutely. These women are monsters.”Hesse cited comments from another Fox News host, Laura Ingraham (“Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman should be ashamed of themselves”), radio host Jesse Kelly (“Who’s the bigger elder abuser, Jill Biden or Gisele Fetterman?”) and the rightwing Washington Examiner, which ran a column under the headline “Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman are failing their husbands”, in which the writer said the two men were “arguably victims of terrible women”.Hesse wrote: “It’s not hard to guess why pundits are going after Jill and Gisele instead of Joe and John. Attacking someone who is ill or elderly simply because they are ill or elderly is beyond the pale in our culture (for now, at least), even for those pundits whose flexible morals usually find a way to drain-snake around any barricades of decency.“But by placing blame on the wives, these commentators get to spread harmful messages against the president and senator while having plausible deniability against charges of ableism. The commentators are not – heavens, no – throwing mud at these poor men. They are merely scolding the women who should know better. It’s ableism, with a little sexism, as a treat.”Read the whole column here.The annual Conservative Political Action Conference is happening outside Washington DC, but while Donald Trump will make an appearance just before it wraps up Saturday, many top Republicans are avoiding the event. These include the party’s leaders in Congress, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who is seen as the strongest challenger against the former president for the GOP’s presidential nomination next year. Up the road in Baltimore, House Democrats are plotting their strategies for the months to come, while awaiting word of whether Joe Biden plans to run for office again.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      DeSantis outlined how he could take policies implemented in Florida national, and cause “a complete upheaval of the deep state,” as he put it.
      CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp does not want to talk about allegations he groped a Republican campaign staffer.
      Mike Pence is among Republicans giving CPAC a miss, and his (mutual) dislike for Trump is probably a big reason why.
      In more lighthearted news about Democratic presidents, the Associated Press reports Barack Obama is honoring the retirement of the woman behind one the most popular chants from his first presidential campaign:Marking the retirement of the woman credited with popularizing the chant “Fired up, ready to go!” that epitomized his campaigns, Barack Obama said her energy played a key role in lifting his spirits and his candidacy for president first time round.“It was early in my campaign, and I wasn’t doing that good,” Obama recalled in a video provided by the Obama Foundation, harking back to a 2007 campaign stop in Greenwood, South Carolina, on a dreary, rainy day.But the small crowd, Obama said, was transformed as Edith Childs led them in the rousing back-and-forth chant: “Fired up, ready to go!”“Leadership and power and inspiration can come from anywhere,” Obama said in the video to mark Childs’ retirement after 24 years on the Greenwood county council.“It just has to do with spirit, and nobody embodied that better than Edith.”Obama praises woman who popularized ‘fired up’ chant during 2008 campaignRead more More

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      What to expect from this year’s CPAC: Biden bashing, 2024 Republican primary chatter and lawsuit gossip

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      What to expect from this year’s CPAC: Biden bashing, 2024 Republican primary chatter and lawsuit gossipThe gathering of conservatives returns to Washington and could prove to be a crystal ball into the GOP’s 2024 outlookIts impresario is facing allegations of sexual assault. Its headline act is a twice impeached former US president under criminal investigation. And its after-dinner speaker is a local news anchor turned far-right election denier.Classified Trump schedules were moved to Mar-a-Lago after FBI search – sourcesRead moreWelcome to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which claims to be the biggest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world. It is also a perennial window to the soul of the Republican party.After going on the road to Florida and Texas because of their more relaxed coronavirus pandemic restrictions, CPAC returns to the Washington area on Wednesday for the first time since 2020, offering a four-day festival of political incorrectness, Maga merchandise and Joe Biden-slamming bombast.But this time the cavernous corridors of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, will fill with chatter about the Republican presidential primary in 2024 – and gossip about CPAC’s own organiser and public face, Matt Schlapp.An unnamed Republican staffer has filed a lawsuit accusing Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, of groping his genitals as he drove Schlapp to a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, last October. The man, who is in his late 30s, is seeking nearly $9.4m in damages in a complaint that included screenshots of purported text messages.Schlapp strenuously denies the allegation. Last month he tweeted a statement from lawyer Charlie Spies that said: “The complaint is false, and the Schlapp family is suffering unbearable pain and stress due to the false allegation from an anonymous individual.”Schlapp, who was director of political affairs in the George W Bush White House, is an influential supporter of former president Donald Trump. His wife, Mercedes Schlapp, served as Trump’s communications director between 2017 and 2019. The lineup of CPAC speakers announced so far suggests that the Schlapps remain firmly in Trump’s camp as he campaigns to win back the presidency in 2024.That lineup also includes Trump allies such as former housing secretary Ben Carson, senators Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz, representatives Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ronny Jackson, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Elise Stefanik, former White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, ex-White House press secretary Sean Spicer and Truth Social chief executive Devin Nunes.Then there is Trump’s son, Don Jr, his fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle – infamous for hollering “The best is yet to come!” at the 2020 Republican national convention – and the main event: a speech by Trump himself that will be akin to an indoor campaign rally.It is a chorus that will try to make the case that reports of Trump losing his grip on the Republican base after seven years have been greatly exaggerated. But the 76-year-old celebrity businessman, whose electability has been questioned after last year’s midterms, will not have it all his own way.CPAC will also hear from both of his officially declared Republican primary rivals in next year’s presidential race so far: Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state and potential candidate, will also speak. Each address will be closely analysed for veiled critiques of Trump – and for applause and cheers, boos and heckles, or polite indifference from the crowd.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, believes that it would be a “massive mistake strategically” for hopefuls to tiptoe around Trump. “How do you expect to beat a guy if you’re not willing to talk about him directly and contrast yourself with him?” he said. “You’re not giving the voters a reason to change the channel.”CPAC’s tweets mockingly point out that Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House of Representatives, and Joy Behar, a comedian and co-host of television’s The View, have not been invited to the conference. But a more striking absence, at least according to what has been announced so far, is Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, widely seen as the most credible threat to Trump.Rick Wilson, who attended many CPACs before cofounding the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “DeSantis is not going: I think that’s because Schlapp, like many other Republicans, has made the probably correct calculus that Ron DeSantis is an overpriced stock and Donald Trump is still the best known quantity in the Republican party.”Florida-based Wilson, who has met DeSantis in person and found him to have to the “charisma of a toaster oven”, argues that the current audience for the governor falls into three groups. “Culture war weirdos who believe this whole ‘woke’ thing, which is a meaningful but not enormous part of the party. National Review writers who are desperate, desperate, desperate, desperate, desperate for anything other than Trump so they can say, ‘See, we’re past that. We can go back to normal.’“I have some bad news for them. Nobody’s ever inviting them back in the room in the Republican party of tomorrow, just as nobody’s ever inviting guys like me back in the room. It’s over. The party’s run by the mob, not by the intellectuals, and it’s never going to go back. Once a movement becomes a populist movement dominated by the grassroots of the base, it never goes back to being a thoughtful, intellectually driven movement.”The third and final group, he added, “are liberal Republican hedge fund billionaires from New York. The open borders, globalist US Chamber of Commerce are going out of their way to help DeSantis! The irony is DeSantis thinks he can have the most elite support and then trick the Maga base into thinking he’s a rah-rah like Trump. It just defies imagination.”CPAC traditionally ends with a less than scientific “straw poll” of attendees’ preferences for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump has dominated it for years. Last summer in Dallas, Texas, he won with 69% of the vote, ahead of DeSantis on 24%. Anything other than a victory for Trump next week would cause political shockwaves.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who estimates that he attended four of five CPACs, said: “Trump and DeSantis will be the number one and two in the poll. Haley and Pompeo and anybody else who might speak at CPAC right now has no shot, no chance, no nothing. It’s the party of Trumpism and Trumpism will be reflected in CPAC.”Border security, crime, culture wars and parents’ rights are likely to feature prominently at the conference. CPAC’s Twitter bio has the hashtags “#AwakeNotWoke” and “#FirePelosiSaveAmerica” – an outdated reference to the retired House speaker. CPAC’s website promotes a documentary entitled The Culture Killers with the warning: “The woke wars are coming to a neighborhood near you.”CPAC will also give the biggest platform yet to growing dissent in the nativist wing of the Republican party over US support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, roughly $50bn and rising. Biden is likely to face criticism for having travelled to Kyiv in the same week that Trump headed to the scene of a toxic train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio.A group of Trump-aligned Republicans led by Gaetz recently introduced a “Ukraine fatigue” resolution calling for an end to military and financial aid to the embattled nation. Greene tweeted this week, “Ukraine is the new Iraq”, while DeSantis condemned the aid as an “open-ended blank cheque”, telling Fox News: “The fear of Russia going into Nato countries and all that, and steamrolling, that has not even come close to happening.”Walsh predicted: “You’ll hear anti-support for Ukraine, pro-Russia, pro-Putin, take care of our borders. You’ll hear that isolationist build-a-wall-around-America attitude at CPAC because that is an animating force now in the party. I doubt Nikki Haley, who is not an isolationist, will even talk about Ukraine, because that’s not what the people in that auditorium want to hear.”Ronald Reagan spoke at the first CPAC in 1974 and towered over it for years. A showpiece dinner is named in the 40th president’s honour, though it might be argued that CPAC has drifted far from his views on immigration, Russia and the definition of conservatism itself. This year Kari Lake, a former TV host who ran for governor of Arizona last year and still refuses to accept her defeat, is the featured speaker at the Reagan dinner.Bardella, who attended CPAC when he was previously a Republican congressional aide, said: “I remember a CPAC that had keynotes from figures like Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty and Paul Ryan. Now we’re seeing figures like Donald Trump and Sean Spicer and, in the past, Steve Bannon.“CPAC at one point in time thought of itself as the establishment conservative cattle call for presidential candidates and now it’s become completely overrun by the extremists and the fringe who are the new establishment of the Republican party. There was a time where someone with the last name Cheney would be welcomed as a hero at an event like CPAC. Now someone with the last name Cheney is considered an enemy of the Republican party.”Another familiar CPAC staple is an exhibitors’ hall where conservative groups promote their work, sell books and seek recruits. Ronald Solomon, president of the Maga Mall, a clothing and merchandising company, will be there as always. Speaking from his home near Palm Beach, Florida, he said his range contains about a hundred Trump or Trump-related hats, compared to around eight for DeSantis.“After that lacklustre midterm he waned a little bit but now the popularity is coming back,” he said. “I am convinced that Trump will be the nominee.”TopicsCPACDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisWashington DCJoe BidenfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Viktor Orbán turns Texas conference into transatlantic far-right love-in

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      Viktor Orbán turns Texas conference into transatlantic far-right love-in The authoritarian Hungarian leader was embraced as a kindred spirit by Trump fans at the CPAC event in Dallas“The globalists can all go to hell,” declared Viktor Orbán. “I have come to Texas!”The crowd roared, whooped and gave a standing ovation as if at a campaign rally for former US president Donald Trump. It was evident they saw in Orbán a kindred spirit – a blunt weapon to wield against liberal foes.Orbán urges Christian nationalists in Europe and US to ‘unite forces’ at CPACRead moreThe Hungarian prime minister was the opening speaker at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, and perhaps the most vivid demonstration yet of the mutual and rapidly growing affinity between the far right in America and Europe.Orbán, who has been prime minister for 12 years, boasted about his hardline stance on illegal immigration, law and order and “gender ideology” in schools. He touted a rise in marriages and fall in abortions. He was unapologetic in his defence of blood-and-soil nationalism and contempt for “leftist media”.And extraordinarily for a foreign leader, he overtly sided with an opposition party – the Republicans – rather than the incumbent Democrats, paying homage to Trump at his golf club in Bedminister, New Jersey, while ignoring Joe Biden at the White House.Calling for Christian nationalists to “unite forces”, Orbán told CPAC: “Victory will never be found by taking the path of least resistance. We must take back the institutions in Washington and in Brussels. We must find friends and allies in one another. We must coordinate the movements of our troops because we face the same challenge.”He noted that US midterm elections will be later this year followed by the presidential contest and European parliamentary elections in 2024. “These two locations will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for western civilisation. Today, we hold neither of them. Yet we need both.”Rarely has the alliance between nationalist parties across the Atlantic been so bold, overt and unshackled. CPAC was once the domain of cold warrior Ronald Reagan. But in recent years guest speakers have included the Brexit cheerleader Nigel Farage and Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of the far-right French politician Marine Le Pen.On Friday the lineup included Steve Bannon, who has worked with openly racist far-right leaders across Europe and once leased a medieval monastery outside Rome to run a “populism bootcamp”.Bannon is former executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he once described as “the platform of the ‘alt-right’”, a movement associated with efforts to preserve “white identity” and defend “western values”. He served as chief strategist in the Trump White House and is now facing prison after being convicted of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the January 6 committee.CPAC Texas also heard from the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who railed against the media and told the audience: “When I said that I’m a Christian nationalist, I have nothing to be ashamed of because that’s what most Americans are.” The event will close on Saturday with Trump who, like Orbán, has faced scrutiny over his relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the non-profit group Right Wing Watch, said: “Rightwing leaders, and especially the religious right leaders in the US, love Viktor Orbán for the same reasons they love Vladimir Putin. This overt embrace of Christian nationalism, willingness to use strongman tactics and the power of the government to enforce so-called traditional values about family and sexuality.”Montgomery added: “We’ve actually seen some signs of that illiberalism and authoritarianism on the Trumpist right in their efforts to ban the teaching of racism in schools, in their aggressive attacks against LGBTQ materials and information in schools and libraries, and even their encouragement of harassment and violence that we’ve seen against election officials and school board members.“All those signs are signs of a disturbing embrace of authoritarianism on the US right and Orbán is a model and a hero for that to them.”Orbán has few bigger fans than Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host who interviewed him during a week-long broadcast from Hungary last year. Carlson has promoted “great replacement theory” – the baseless claim of a plot to turn white people into a minority through immigration – in 400 of his shows, according to an analysis by the New York Times.Orbán’s visit to the US came amid backlash over anti-migrant remarks in which he warned that Europeans must not “become peoples of mixed race” and cited The Camp of the Saints, a 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail that portrays a dystopia in which a flotilla of south Asian people invade France. The novel has also been promoted by Trump allies such as Bannon and Stephen Miller.Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Orbán represents a quiet part out loud element of today’s Republican party. That quiet part out loud is the overt appeal to racial politics, the not-bothering-to-hide-it white supremacy element of the global alt-right and authoritarian movement. Donald Trump was the thing that let it loose in the US.“Orbán has struck a set of blows against the media in Hungary, which is one of their main targets here. He has overtly embraced the sort of white replacement politics that are so popular with the Tucker Carlson set and a lot of the other folks that are members of the American Maga [Make America great again] movement.”Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies, added: “Those things have all added up to giving Orbán a kind of fanboy following in the US of people who were once conservative Republicans and who are now racially driven authoritarian wannabes. He’s the guy who’s pulling it off at a scale that Donald Trump didn’t achieve in the US.”That appeal includes a stealth attack on democracy. Critics say that Hungary’s judiciary, media and other institutions are suffering death by a thousand cuts as Orbán slowly and surely consolidates power. His rightwing Fidesz party has drawn legislative districts in Hungary in a way that makes it very difficult for opposition parties to win seats – not dissimilar to partisan gerrymandering efforts for state legislative and congressional seats in America. The process currently favors Republicans because they control more of the state legislatures that create those boundaries.And at CPAC, purveyors of Trump’s “big lie” – the false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him – held prominent slots. Mike Lindell, chief executive of MyPillow, pushed preposterous conspiracy theories about voting machines. Several speakers denounced the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection as a sham.Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said of Orbán: “They see a blueprint for fascism. They see someone who embodies the Republican party’s values of obstructing free and fair elections, of undermining democratic institutions, of expanding government power and politicising the judicial branch, marginalising minority communities and corrupting the pillars of a free society.“When you talk about an autocratic regime, that’s what Prime Minister Orbán is in Hungary and it’s exactly the blueprint that Republicans are hoping to follow here in the United States of America. It’s not surprising in the least that, especially in a place like CPAC Texas, these rightwing white nationalists are embracing someone like Orbán.”Earlier this year, when CPAC held an event in Europe, it naturally chose Hungary. Orbán remains an outlier on the continent – for now. Le Pen lost the French presidential election to Emmanuel Macron, though she gained the far right’s biggest share of the vote yet. In Italy Giorgia Meloni, leader of a party with neofascist origins, is strongly positioned to become prime minister after snap elections this autumn.Robert P Jones, founder and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank in Washington and author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, said: “There is this identifiable movement. The difference in many of the European countries is it is represented in minority parties.“In the US now, I think it’s safe to say that this ethno-religious vision of the country has taken over one of our two major political parties. Even demographically speaking, nearly seven in 10 Republicans are white and Christian today in a country that’s only 44% white and Christian. You can see that identity taking hold as the animating beating heart of the party. It’s a really dangerous situation.”TopicsCPACThe far rightViktor OrbánUS politicsRepublicansHungaryfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Conservatives want to make the US more like Hungary. A terrifying thought | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      Conservatives want to make the US more like Hungary. A terrifying thoughtAndrew GawthorpeFor the US right, Orbán’s Hungary – unconstrained by an independent media, democratic institutions or racial diversity – isn’t a cautionary tale, but an aspiration Long a safe space where conservatives could say what they really thought, this year the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) is hosting an event in Budapest, its first ever on the European continent. Attendees will be treated to panels about “western civilization under attack” and be addressed by American conservative luminaries including the former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and media figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. That Hungary has become an authoritarian state whose leader, Viktor Orbán, has deconstructed Hungarian democracy and become a close ally of Vladimir Putin doesn’t seem to faze anyone involved. In fact, it’s the whole point.Ending Roe v Wade is just the beginning | Thomas ZimmerRead moreThe embrace of Orbán as a role model by many on the right seems at first glance puzzling. After all, conservatives are not known for welcoming lessons from Europeans on how America ought to be run. But it becomes more explicable when you realize that for years, Orbán has been playing out the fantasies of Cpac’s attendees, unconstrained by the independent institutions, impartial media and racial diversity which American conservatives see as their foils at home. Where Orbán has gone, American conservatives want to follow. And increasingly, they are doing so.Central to Orbán’s appeal is that he is a fighter who has turned his country into, according to the organizers of Cpac, “one of the engines of Conservative resistance to the woke revolution”. In some ways Orbán resembles Trump, but in the eyes of many conservatives he’s better understood as the man they wished Trump would be. Where Trump was a thrice-married playboy who boasted of sleeping with porn stars and managed to lose the 2020 election, Orbán seems both genuinely committed to upholding conservative cultural values and has grimly consolidated control over his country, excluding the left from power indefinitely.Among the terrifying implications of the American right’s embrace of Orbán is that it shows that the right would be willing to dismantle American democracy in exchange for cultural and racial hegemony. Many of Orbán’s admirers come from the “post-liberal right”, a group of intellectuals and politicians who see “traditional American culture” as so far degenerated that it may be necessary to wrest power away from a corrupted people in order to make America great again. They count among Orbán’s victories his clampdown on gay and transgender rights and his refusal to allow Muslim refugees to enter Hungary. Upholding a particular set of “Christian” (actually nationalistic and bigoted) values is seen as worth the damage to democracy – the latter might even be necessary for the former.Things get even more sinister when we consider that America is a vast continent-sized country of enormous cultural and racial diversity. Imposing a conservative monoculture on such a country could only be achieved through one means – governmental coercion. The desirability of doing just that is now openly discussed on the right. Over the past several years, many have been advocating “common-good constitutionalism” – an idea put forward by the conservative legal thinker Adrian Vermeule which holds that America should embrace a new interpretation of the constitution focused on, among other things, a “respect for hierarchy” and a willingness to “legislate morality”. As surely as such ideas underpinned the Jim Crow south, such ideas mesh easily with, indeed are required by, any attempt to bring Orbánism to the United States as a whole.Far from being limited to the trolls at Cpac or obscure writers, such an approach to governing is already being implemented by conservatives up and down the country. State laws which ban teaching about race or gender issues in schools have passed in many states, and Republicans have continued their assault on businesses which speak out on these issues. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has moved to use the power of the state to punish Disney for its stance on gay rights. In the face of cultural change which conservatives dislike, the principle of free speech has gone out of the window, and the heavy hand of the state is knocking at the door.The recently leaked US supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade is perhaps the clearest indication of the danger that this trend poses. By removing a fundamental individual right and once again enabling conservatives to impose their own moral views on women’s bodies, the decision – if passed as written – will be seen on the right as a landmark in how the power of the state can be used to discipline a degenerated culture and regulate morality. Further crackdowns are sure to follow. Locked out of power on the supreme court and facing steep challenges to winning power in America’s unbalanced electoral system, defenders of liberalism will struggle to fight back.It’s no exaggeration to say that Orbánism, with its rejection of democracy and its willingness to use coercion to enforce a narrow cultural and religious agenda, defines the danger posed by modern American conservatism. The danger is greatest when the two elements come together. Unable to win the approval of the people on whom they wish to force their values, conservatives will be tempted to proceed further and further down an undemocratic path. That path has already taken them all the way to Budapest. The fear now is that they will ultimately bring Budapest back to America.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the host of the podcast America Explained
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      Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’

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      Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’Hungarian leader also tells Republicans at Budapest conference that shows like Tucker Carlson’s should be broadcast ‘24/7’ The Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán, has told a conference of US conservatives that the path to power required having their own media outlets, calling for shows like Tucker Carlson’s to be broadcast “24/7”.Orbán, recently elected to a fourth term, laid out a 12-point blueprint to achieving and consolidating power to a special meeting of the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), under the slogan of “God, Homeland, Family”, held in Budapest.Orbán and US right to bond at Cpac in Hungary over ‘great replacement’ ideologyRead moreThe Hungarian prime minister said that with his fourth electoral victory on 3 April, Hungary had been “completely healed” of “progressive dominance”. He suggested it was time for the right to join forces.“We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find allies in one another and coordinate the movements of our troops,” Orbán said.He told Republicans in the Balnaconference centre on the banks of the Danube that media influence was one of the keys to success. In Hungary, the prime minister and his allies have effective control of most media outlets in Hungary, including state TV.“Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left,” he said. “The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.”He portrayed the US media as being dominated by Democrats, who he claimed were being “served” by CNN, the New York Times and others.“Of course, the GOP has its media allies but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend, Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there,” he said. “His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say 24/7.”Carlson had been billed as a key speaker at the CPAC conference, but the Fox News talk show host sent only a 38 second video message, in which he extolled Hungary under the Orbán government as a model for the US.“I can’t believe that you’re in Budapest and I am not,” he said. “What a wonderful country. And you know why you can tell it’s a wonderful country? Because the people who turned our country into a much less good place are hysterical when you point it out.”“The last thing they want is any kind of signpost to a better way, and Hungary certainly provides that,” Carlson added. “A free and decent and beautiful country that cares about its people, their families, and the physical landscape.”Journalists from international media outlets were denied access to the event, including the New Yorker, Vox Media, Vice News, Rolling Stone, and the Associated Press, despite months of requests. The organizers either ignored their requests for accreditation or told them to “watch the event online”.Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union that runs CPAC, said the Central-European country is the right place to start a conversation about Europe.Hungary: where editors tell reporters to disregard facts before their eyesRead moreOrbán’s 12-point action plan also included points on faith, “because the absence of faith is dangerous” and the importance in countering “LGBT-propaganda” which was “still new in our country but we have already destroyed it”.The second day of the CPAC conference on Friday is billed to start with a “surprise video message” that some speculate will be from Donald Trump, who was also invited to the event. The schedule also features Candace Owens, described as “Trump’s favorite influencer’, video messages from Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Santiago Abascal, president of Spain’s Vox party, and Zsolt Bayer, a pro-Orbán pundit who formerly called Roma people “animals”, referred to Jewish people as “stinking excrement” and used racist slurs for Black people during the BLM protests.Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate from the French far right National Rally, was announced as a speaker on Monday, but the post disappeared from the organizers’ Facebook after a couple of hours, and her name was deleted from CPAC Hungary’s website.TopicsCPACViktor OrbánHungaryUS politicsEuropeRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Critics accuse CPAC of becoming pay-to-play as Trump loyalists gain power

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      Critics accuse CPAC of becoming pay-to-play as Trump loyalists gain powerQuestions also arise about possible violations of a lobbying disclosure law known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act Conservative influence powerhouse CPAC and the American Conservative Union that sponsors it, face criticism on multiple fronts over financial and other dealings with foreign backers, and charges their gatherings have become pay-to-play affairs with corporate lobbyists as Donald Trump allies gain power and influence.The Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual meeting is a hugely influential date on the conservative calendar and attracts a wide array of power players in the Republican party and broader conservative movement. CPAC’s “straw poll” is seen as a potential predictor of Republican presidential candidates. Last month it was held in Florida where Trump was the star attraction, and won the straw poll by a healthy margin.The growing salvos aimed at CPAC and the ACU have come as the ACU has expanded fundraising operations and become closely linked to Trump and his large loyalist base, say current and former ACU board members.Critics say that in recent years a “pay-to-play” mentality has become pervasive at CPAC events under the leadership of veteran Washington lobbyist and staunch Trump backer Matt Schlapp, who chairs ACU and whose wife Mercedes worked in the Trump White House as director of strategic communications.The ACU board, which numbers about two dozen and tapped Schlapp to lead the group in 2014, has added some new fundraising muscle and corporate lobbyists including the top lobbyist for Comcast, a former client of Cove Strategies, Schlapp’s consulting and lobbying firm.Moreover, a current ACU board member and lobbying experts have raised red flags about CPAC helping host events overseas in Brazil, South Korea, Japan and elsewhere. Meanwhile, CPAC’s US meetings have accepted funding from some foreign entities that have pushed political lobbying messages, spurring questions about possible violations of a lobbying disclosure law known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara).Some former and current ACU board members say recent changes have caused worry.“They have become just another Beltway organization, no longer the membership organization – with members across America, derived from direct mail and state-based chapters,” said publisher Jameson Campaigne, who served on the ACU board for about four decades until 2016.A conservative activist and longtime CPAC attendee voiced similar concerns and noted that the “pay-to-play” mentality of ACU and CPAC is evident at the annual meetings. “It is obvious from the agenda and the speakers who now dominate the events that it’s much more a pay-to-play conference than a conservative issue driven one,” he saidNot surprisingly, the new modus operandi at CPAC in some ways mirrors the lobbying background of Schlapp, whose firm Cove Strategies thrived during the Trump years but took a hit last year after he left office.In 2020 Cove Strategies raked in almost $2.4m – including $750,000 from a Georgia executive convicted of securities fraud for whom Schlapp tried but failed to obtain a Trump pardon. But last year after Trump left office, Cove’s revenues plummeted to just under $400,000, according to OpenSecrets, a non-partisan lobbying watchdog.ACU veterans say its board has had a makeover in recent years under Schlapp. “Matt changed the board so it’s more business people and fundraisers who can help Matt,” said one ACU alumnus. “It’s changed from a conservative conference to a Trump conference.”The ACU board now boasts some wealthy conservatives such as Bill Walton, the chairman of a private equity firm who also hosts an eponymous talk radio show which has become a staple at CPAC gatherings such as the recent one in Orlando. Walton served on a Treasury transition team for Trump before he took office.Other board members with Trump ties include KT McFarland, who served for a few months as deputy national security adviser at the start of his administration.Schlapp’s fundraising skills include a stint as the top lobbyist for oil giant Koch Industries and seem to have paid off for CPAC and ACU.A series of CPAC overseas gatherings along with more regional CPAC events in recent years in the US, have helped boost ACU revenues.Overall revenues from CPAC events more than quadrupled from $735,000 in the period April 2020 to Jan 2021 to $3.4m from April 2021 to January 2022, according to an ACU board statement that a current board member shared with the Guardian.Nonetheless, a current ACU board member voiced worries that key decisions about the overseas events that CPAC has helped arrange for the last few years are made without adequate board scrutiny.“The board has become more and more ceremonial,” the current board member said. “We don’t even vote to authorize international CPAC events. Because there are so many potential pitfalls to foreign engagement, including accepting foreign funds, these should be board level decisions.”Some overseas events such as one in Brazil in 2019 have raised eyebrows given the far-right tendencies of some key attendees. Eduardo Bolsonaro, a Brazilian rightist politician and policeman who is the son of the country’s authoritarian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has also attended a couple of CPAC’s annual events including the latest one in Orlando.But more ominously, a whistleblower complaint was filed last month stating that “there is sufficient evidence of alleged violations to support a federal criminal or civil investigation”.Specifically, the complaint names Schlapp, his wife Mercedes who has been a key figure at CPAC events, ACU, the ACU Foundation, and Schlapp’s lobbying and consulting firm Cove Strategies.The complaint by the whistleblower, which was first reported by Huffington Post and confirmed by the Guardian, came shortly before the latest CPAC event last month where several foreign groups paid in total almost $200,000 to have exhibit space and other perks at the group’s Orlando meeting.Among the foreign groups that paid five-figure sums to participate at the latest CPAC event were CPAC Korea, a conservative European thinktank called New Direction, and CPAC Hungary which seems to have ties to the party of Hungary’s far-right president, Viktor Orbán, and is slated to help host an event in Budapest in May.CPAC’s sponsorship rates suggest that CPAC Korea paid $75,000 and had an exhibit booth to advertise its messages Other benefits included a three-minute video shown from CPAC’s main stage.A CPAC Korea video urged people to sign a petition opposing a House bill to encourage a peace treaty between South and North Korea. CPAC Korea also handed out literature and displayed signs that urged attendees to “End the #fakepeace on the Korean peninsula act – OPPOSE H.R. 3446.”Brett Kappel, a lawyer with Harmon Curran who has handled FAara work, told the Guardian that the activities of CPAC Korea in Orlando “definitely raises red flags about possible Fara violations by the foreign CPAC’s operations in the United States”.The justice department, he added, would want to know “if foreign governments or political parties are funding these groups, or if foreign governments or political parties are directing their lobbying activities.”Craig Holman, an ethics and lobbying expert, raised related concerns about CPAC allowing the foreign group to push its political message. “If CPAC is facilitating Korea’s interest in influencing public policy on American soil, then CPAC is serving as a foreign agent for Korea,” said Holman, a veteran lobbying expert with the liberal group Public Citizen.“CPAC Korea definitely should register,” Holman added. “ If CPAC Korea is run or accountable to CPAC generally, then CPAC should register.”Neither an ACU spokesperson or Schlapp responded to emails requesting comment about the whistleblower complaint, and possible Fara violations at its latest meeting by CPAC Korea.Some of the controversies now plaguing ACU and CPAC are not all that surprising. When Schlapp was elected chairman in 2014, the ACU board member Ned Ryun told Politico he expected Schlapp to make fundraising a priority, and to make CPAC more of a “training ground for activists”, rather than a policy event dominated by big speeches.Still, for some former ACU board members the spate of controversial changes in recent years have sparked dismay. One ex-board member said an old quip by writer Eric Hoffer seemed apt.“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”TopicsCPACRepublicansUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump ignores Farage – and risks midterm elections farrago – with insistence on big lie

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      Trump ignores Farage – and risks midterm elections farrago – with insistence on big lie Analysis: His British friend tried to help but the former president did not want to forget his voter fraud obsession and focus on the future. CPAC loved it but Republicans hoping to take Congress know they are courting disasterThe sagest advice given to Donald Trump all week came from a man who is neither a Republican nor an American.Donald Trump defends calling Putin ‘smart’, hints at 2024 presidential bidRead moreNigel Farage, the British politician, broadcaster and demagogue whose Brexit campaign coincided with Trump’s rise to power, warned his old pal against endlessly fixating on the 2020 election.“This message of a stolen election, if you think about it, is actually a negative backward looking message,” Farage told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida.“There is a better, more positive message the Republican party needs to embrace and it’s this: ‘We are going state by state, vote by vote to make sure that America has the best, the cleanest, the fairest election system anywhere in the western world.’”Urging an end to the “big lie” obsession is heresy at places like CPAC, the Woodstock of the red meat right. Perhaps no pro-Trump Republican would dare breathe it to the former president, lest he slap them with a demeaning nickname, endorse a primary opponent or blackball them from his luxury Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.But Farage, as foreigner and fellow traveller, may have felt liberated to speak an inconvenient truth: that endlessly re-litigating the last election with false claims of voter fraud could prove a serious liability for Republicans in November’s midterms.The former UK Independence party and Brexit party leader went on: “That negative anger must be turned into a positive. You’ve got to offer the voters of this country a shining city on the hill. You’ve got to give them a vision. People want dreams, people want hopes, and the deliverers of that message are you guys.”The audience sounded receptive enough. And while some CPAC speakers did promulgate “the big lie” – Ohio Senate hopeful Josh Mandel declared, “I want to say it very clearly and very directly: I believe this election was stolen from Donald J Trump” – they generally gave greater emphasis to winning Congress in 2022 and, of course, Trump returning to the White House in 2024.Jim Jordan, an Ohio congressman and close Trump ally, declared: “I believe President Trump is going to run again … I think if he runs, he’s going to win.”But the annual CPAC straw poll testing who should get the Republican nomination raised more questions than answers. Of course Trump won with more votes than everyone else combined. But his 59% was not quite the overwhelming show of force he might have hoped for in what is usually the capital of Trumpistan.There is now a clear alternative. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, finished second on 28%, well clear of Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, on 2%.In a separate poll where Trump was removed from the equation, DeSantis won by a landslide 61%.On the other hand, Florida is DeSantis’s home state, so he might expect to punch above his weight here. The governor gave a well received speech on Thursday that notably failed to mention Trump. But the audience for Trump’s address on Saturday was appreciably bigger and brimming with “Trump 2024” badges and caps.Even those sporting DeSantis regalia were not quite ready to back him. David Duffy, 57, a retired insurance worker sporting a giant “DeSantisLand” flag, said: “We want to keep President Trump as our president. We believe he still is our president and, with DeSantis being 42 years old, we want to give him a little bit more time.”Asked for her 2024 preference, Marnie Allen, wearing a “DeSantisLand” cap, said: “Trump, only because I owe him. I think we all owe him to make up for the disasters and because he’s going to go in with a vengeance this time and take care of our fourth level of government: career bureaucrats. He will go in this time and he will take a machete to them.”The 51-year-old from Orlando, who works in higher education, felt compelled to add: “Not a real machete, of course, but a figurative machete.”Unless something dramatic happens – a criminal indictment in New York, say – the nomination remains Trump’s to lose. On Saturday he dropped his strongest hint yet that he does intend to pursue it.The strange Republican world where the big lie lives on and Trump is fighting to save democracyRead moreHe clearly did not get Farage’s memo. Trump told the audience: “The Rinos [Republicans In Name Only] and certain weak Republican politicians want to ignore election integrity also but we cannot ignore it. We have to fix it. Make no mistake, they [Democrats] will try to do it again in ’22 and ’24, and we cannot let them do that.“And the way we [let them do that] is to come to a very powerful conclusion as to what happened in 2020. We stand down to stop talking about it, we stop making Americans aware of the cheating and corruption that went on. That’s really saying, ‘It’s OK, you can do it again.’ We can’t let that happen.”The slapping sound you heard was a hundred Republican midterm candidates planting their hands on their foreheads. Trump is coming to a district near you, with a big lie to tell. It remains Democrats’ best hope of a midterm miracle.TopicsDonald TrumpCPACUS politicsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022US elections 2024Ron DeSantisanalysisReuse this content More