(Video link at bottom of story)
- Trump predicted Democrats would “lose the White House decisively four years from now.”
- “I might just decide to beat them a third time,” he added, counting the 2020 election as a win in his column.
- “We reject left wing lunacy…and Cancel Culture.”
- “We love you!” cheered the crowd.
- Trump reviewed election fraud allegations, and outlined parameters of an election reform proposal.
Donald Trump made his first speech since leaving the presidency Sunday afternoon to an energized and enthusiastic audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida.
The speech sounded much like other speeches Trump has given to supporters at his famous, packed campaign rallies during the past five years.
He began by asking the audience: “Do you miss me yet?” to which they answered with cheers and rounds of applause.
Trump also started off his speech, which began at 4:50pm Eastern Time, by saying, the journey is “far from over” and “in the end, we will win.”
Throughout the course of the speech, Trump joked and sounded upbeat, referred to the 2024 presidential race, and repeatedly evoked the idea of what he sees as forgetfulness or mental incompetence in President Joe Biden.
He paid respect to conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who recently passed away from lung cancer, and said Limbaugh was watching closely and “smiling down.”
Trump said he was speaking to address the future of “our party, our movement and our beloved country” and said conservatives will be on the forefront of fighting the “Cancel Culture.”
“I will continue to fight right by your side.”
“We’re not starting new parties,” Trump announced. “We have the Republican party. We are going to unite and be stronger than ever before. I am not starting a new party. That was fake news.”
He remarked that a new party would only serve to divide the party and make it so “we could never win.”
“We all knew the Biden administration was going to be bad, but none of us knew how bad it would be,” said Trump. He said that during the campaign, even Biden “didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.”
Illegal immigration and the border
Trump called the Biden administration, “anti-jobs, anti-family, anti-borders, anti-energy, anti-women and anti-science,” and said that, in one month, “we’ve gone from America First to America Last.”
The former president pointed to the looming, new crisis at America’s southern border with Mexico. He said the youth migrant crisis recently launched by the Biden administration’s border-related moves has “put the vile coyotes back in business…in a big way,” reversing progress in preventing humanitarian abuses and illegal immigration.
“They are coming at levels you haven’t even seen yet, by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions they’ll be coming,” predicted Trump. “There’s no masks, there’s no double masks,” noted Trump, referring to thousands of migrants who were waiting in Mexico for asylum hearings, but are now being brought into the U.S.
Trump also predicted Democrats would “lose the White House decisively four years from now.” He added, “Actually, you know, they just lost the White House. Who knows? I might just decide to beat them for a third time.” The audience laughed and cheered.
He also said a proposed Biden-Democrat immigration bill would grant mass amnesty to illegal immigrants, “massively expand chain migration,” and provide illegal immigrants with taxpayer funded lawyers.
“Republicans must assure it never is allowed to become federal law,” Trump told the audience.
Trump also said that the topics of many of the dozens of executive orders Biden has already signed were not discussed in the presidential debates or in the news media.
Covid-19 and vaccines
After addressing border security, Trump went on to criticize the fact that some students are still out of school under the auspices of Covid-19 closings.
“They must get back and they must get back now. Right now. It’s crazy. Terrible. Terrible,” said Trump. He said he respects teachers but blames the teacher’s unions for what he sees as unnecessary closures. He also referred to what he said is an uptick in suicides and depression among children locked out of their schools for almost a year now.
Trump reviewed his efforts as president to push the FDA under “Operation Warp Speech” to pave the way for Covid-19 vaccines to be produced faster than vaccines have ever been produced before. “We took a calculated risk,” said Trump. “Never forget that we did it. Never let them take the credit because they don’t deserve the credit.”
“Almost 20 million Americans” got the vaccine before he left office, Trump said, including “1.5 million on my final day alone. Yet Biden said just a few days ago that when he got here…there was no vaccine…I don’t think he said that in a malicious way…he said that because he didn’t really know what the hell was happening.”
Trump noted that Biden, himself, got vaccinated in December. “But I guess he forgot.”
Biden policies
Next, Trump criticized what he said are America’s “endless wars” such as the Afghanistan war, which he drew down and attempted to draw to a close over the objections of some within his own party and the military.
“Not one American soldier has been killed in Afghanistan in over a year,” declared the former president. “Not one. Think of that.”
He also criticized the Biden adminsiration’s quick move to eliminate U.S. sanctions against Iran. “Had we had a fair election…we would have had a deal with Iran within the first week,” said Trump.
He also hammered the Biden administration’s decision to rejoin the World Health Organization (WHO) and pay almost $500 million to the organization, while China is paying $39 million. WHO was heavily criticized by some in both political parties for allegedly protecting China and making mistakes during the initial spread of Covid-19, which is believed to have originated from China. “It is so sad,” said Trump.
Trump said it was “fine” for the Biden administration to rejoin the Paris climate deal, but not without renegotiating a better deal for the U.S. “What good does it do when we’re clean but China’s not and India’s not and Russia’s not?” asked Trump.
He similarly faulted the Biden administration for stopping construction on the Keystone Pipeline addition.
“Wait and see what happens to your gasoline…we cannot let this stuff continue to go on. One of my proudest accomplishment as president was to make the United States energy independent” but predicted “we are heading from energy dominance to energy disaster.”
“Wait and see what happens to your gasoline…we cannot let this stuff continue to go on. One of my proudest accomplishment as president was to make the United States energy independent” but predicted “we are heading from energy dominance to energy disaster.”
The price of gasoline has surged 30% and will go to $5.00 a gallon, said Trump. “We will now be relying on Russia and the Middle East for oil.”
Trump moved onto the trend of allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports as transgenders, which the Biden administration says must be allowed.
Some feminists, such as former tennis star Martina Navratilova, side with conservatives in claiming such a policy robs women of opportunities guaranteed to them under Title IX civil rights law.
“Is that controversial?” asked Trump, adding, “You haven’t heard anything, yet.”
“We respect our great American flag,” Trump told the audience, which had leapt to its feet and then began cheering, “We love you!”
“It’s a great honor,” replied Trump.
‘We reject left wing lunacy…and Cancel Culture,” said Trump amid cheers.
Referred to what he called the Biden administration’s “very close, personal relationship with China,” saying China is “an economic threat.”
Election fraud and election reform
Speaking of the 2020 election, Trump remarked “Such a disgrace! Such a disgrace!”
He made the case for election reform, and pointed to Democrats using Covid-19 to change election rules without approval of state legislatures “making it therefore illegal,” claimed Trump. “It had a massive impact on the election. This alone would have easily changed the outcome of the election.”
“We can never let this and other abuses of the 2020 election be repeated or happen again. We need election integrity and election reform immediately… Illegal aliens and dead people are voting..the level of dishonesty is not to be believed. We have a very sick and corrupt electoral process that must be fixed immediately. This election was rigged and the Supreme Court and other courts didn’t want to do anything about it.”
The audience broke into a chant of, “We won! We won!”
“We did,” said Trump.
“The Supreme Court, they didn’t have the courage to act…I was told the president of the United States had ‘no standing’,” said Trump. “They should be ashamed of themselves for what they have done to our country. They didn’t have the guts or the courage to make the right decisions.”
Trump proposed several elements for election reform:
- There should be one Election Day, not 45 or 30
- Mail-in voting should be allowed only for those who are out of the country, very sick, or military when they cannot vote in person
- There must be a legitimate reason to vote absentee
- There must be voter ID
- There must be signature matching
- There must be 100% verification of the citizenship of every person who votes
- There must be chain of custody protection for every ballot
Mentioning Detroit and Philadelphia, Trump told the audience, “You saw what happened. You saw what was going on…when you have more votes than people that’s a problem.”
Trump said he received 63 million votes in 2016 and was told by his pollster that 66 million would clinch the win in 2020. “We had almost 75 million…what happened?” asked Trump. “What happened?”
“18 of 19 bellwether counties that have correctly predicted the election for decades voted for Trump,” noted the former president. “There’s never been anything like that. And yet did Biden win? No.”
“We have to have a sense of humor,” said Trump with a chuckle.
Censorship and “Cancel Culture”
Trump moved on to the heavy hand of censorship.
“If we can be censored for telling the truth and speaking out about corruption…we will only have tyranny,” declared Trump. “Now there is no debate because they refuse to allow our side to speak or even be heard.”
“The time has come to break up Big Tech monopolies,” said the former president. He said if the federal government refuses to act, then every state should punish the Big Tech giants with major sanctions whenever the companies silence conservative voices.
Trump asked people to visit DonaldJTrump.com to take part in “struggle for the survival of America as we know it.” But he stopped short of saying exactly what role he would play.
Trump predicted that in 2024, “a triumphant Republican will make a return to the White House– and I wonder who that will be.”
Just before former President Trump’s speech, CPAC released a poll showing Trump with a 97% approval rating among those polled at the conference.
“He’s literally the most popular figure we have ever had in the conservative movement,” said pollster Jim McLaughlin, who led the survey.
The survey released at CPAC also included a 2024 straw poll with 18 Republican candidates: Trump won handily with 55% of support among attendees.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Trump ally, came in second place with 21%.
Sixty-eight percent (68%) of those present said they would like to see Trump run for president again in 2024.
The conference was held in Orlando rather than the Washington D.C. area, where it’s typically held. The Washington D.C. region currently has much stricter Covid-19 requirements than Florida does.
The speech was carried live on C-SPAN. You can watch at the link below.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?509084-1/president-trump-addresses-cpac
