Putin Didn't Speak Himself... But Trump Did
This morning, Biden warned Americans that “Russia has taken Ukraine's territory for the first time in many months. But here in America, the Speaker gave the House a 3 weeks vacation. They have to come back!… Failure to support Ukraine in this critical moment will never be forgotten in history.” Meanwhile, Trump spoke at the final day of the anti-democracy hate fest in. Maryland— CPAC, where he used his favorite oratory technique, projectionist, to accuse Biden of bringing on “crime, violence, bloodshed, chaos and tyranny,” presenting himself as the only brake on “Biden's fast track to hell.” Chaos, tyranny and Hell, of course, are all hallmarks of Trump's presence in U.S. politics.
The J-6 insurrection was “treated as a rallying cry— with speakers, vendors and attendees fanning the flames of conspiracy over the events of that day… Trump allies and supporters at CPAC are glorifying the events of January 6, 2021, and embracing Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Their comments follow Trump’s lead. The former president has referred to those charged for their actions at the Capitol as ‘hostages’ and has said he would consider pardoning them. Far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec on Friday called those charged with crimes connected to violence on January 6 ‘political prisoners’ and urged them to be pardoned… And he described 2024 as an election that will deliver “righteous retribution” against Trump’s enemies. ‘After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America,’ he said.”
GOP officials, too, parroted Trump’s lies about 2020. New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, one of the Republicans believed to be on Trump’s shortlist for vice president, falsely claimed that Democrats “unconstitutionally rigged the 2020 election.”
…During a CPAC panel Friday, Jeffrey Clark, a Trump administration Justice Department official, repeated a series of falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election, including disproven theories concerning mail-in voting and electronic voting machines, and called the prosecution of January 6 defendants a “grave injustice.”
NBC News reported that “Nazis appeared to find a friendly reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year. Throughout the conference, racist extremists, some of whom had secured official CPAC badges, openly mingled with conference attendees and espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories. The presence of these individuals has been a persistent issue at CPAC. In previous years, conference organizers have ejected well-known Nazis and white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes. But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017. The MAGAt-Nazi straw poll this year was to pick a running mate for Señor T. It was a tie between Kristi Noem and Vivek Ramaswamy.
On CNN yesterday, John King invited David Axelrod to analyze what was going on at CPAC and asked him how helpful the speakers— particularly Clark— would be for the Trump campaign. Axelrod thinks every American should be watching it. “If I were the Biden campaign,” said Axelrod, “I would pay to have every American see the CPAC convention because the thing that has been thwarting Republicans in the midterms and since, has been this impression of the Republican Party as an extreme party. Yesterday, you had someone stand up at the CPAC convention as a speaker [Posobiec] and basically talk about, ‘We almost toppled democracy on January 6. We’re going to do it now with this.’ And he held up a cross, basically advocating for theocracy. This is not the image that the Republican Party wants."
In 2012, the John Birch Society, the original GOP neo-Nazi conspiracy nuts, had been banned from CPAC. They’re back. Elaina Plott Calabro wrote that “The John Birch Society, once the scourge of some of the nation’s most prominent conservatives, relegated to the outermost edges of the movement, now fits neatly into the mainstream of the American right. David Giordano, another field coordinator for the organization who was attending CPAC, credited Trump for hastening the shift, challenging the global elite in ways that past Republican presidents had only ever talked about doing. ‘What were the things they said about him? “Racist” and “anti-Semitic”— that got my attention,’ Giordano told me, smiling. ‘What’d they say about the John Birch Society? “Racist” and “anti-Semitic.” That’s when you know you’re over the target.’ Longtime members and officers of the organization exuded the polite but unmistakable air of I told you so at the conference. ‘A lot of people will say, “Oh, my grandmother or my dad was a member. We used to think he was crazy, but now, not so much,”’ Smart said, beaming. ‘Because we’ve been warning people about a lot of this stuff for decades, obviously.’ … Some national Republicans, moreover, no longer try to maintain even a nominal distance from the organization. Joining the John Birch Society for its return to CPAC in 2023 were lawmakers including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Ronny Jackson of Texas, both of whom sat for livestreamed interviews with The New American as throngs of conference-goers listened from the sidelines. At this year’s conference, a woman helping staff the booth urged me to check out the magazine’s January issue, the cover of which featured a close-up portrait of Andy Biggs; the Arizona congressman— former chair of the House Freedom Caucus— had sat for an exclusive interview on ‘many of the issues facing our country,’ including President Joe Biden’s ‘corruption,’ as the magazine put it, ‘immigration, and China.’”
For the John Birch Society, returning to CPAC has meant slipping seamlessly back in among groups and personalities that for years have been operating within its legacy, whether they knew it or not. The organization has been “eclipsed by many different groups and offshoots, so they’re not controversial in the same way that, say, Richard Spencer was a few years ago,” Matthew Dallek, a historian at George Washington University and the author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, told me.
Why was the John Birch Society invited back to CPAC? The better question, in Dallek’s view: “Why wouldn’t it be?”