Donald Trump on Saturday called himself a “political dissident” persecuted by “thugs” in the US justice system as he issued a dystopian rallying cry for voters to support his return to the White House.
Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, a major gathering of activists that in recent years has been entirely captured by the former president and his allies.
Trump has placed his own sense of victimhood at the center of his 2024 presidential campaign based on the 91 criminal charges filed against him. But he recently elevated his complaint by comparing himself to Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died suddenly in prison last week.
“I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident,” Trump told the crowd.
“I would rather lose my freedom than surrender to this group of thugs and tyrants, fascists, scoundrels and scoundrels,” he added, citing US President Joe Biden and “deranged” prosecutors.
Saturday’s primary in South Carolina is expected to move him closer to the Republican presidential nomination with a victory over his only remaining rival Nikki Haley.
His appearance at CPAC capped four days of Trump-friendly elected officials and media talk show hosts filling the sprawling hotel resort along the Potomac River with apocalyptic depictions of a country gripped by inflation and immigration.
“I told you that if crooked Joe Biden came to the White House, our borders would be abolished, our middle class would be decimated, and our communities would be plagued by bloodshed, chaos and violent crime. We were right about everything,” Trump said.
CPAC once represented the traditional GOP, but is now dominated by Trump, his allies and their ferocious unilateralism, economic populism and opposition to immigration. This year the slogan of the event was “where globalism goes to die”.
Sympathy for the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election was widespread among speakers and attendees, as was mockery of Haley’s presidential candidacy. There have also been conspiracy theories that Michelle Obama was preparing to jump into the Democratic race. There has been contempt for Ukraine’s aid and calls for a peace deal with Vladimir Putin.
“Welcome to the end of democracy, we are here to completely overthrow it,” Jack Posobiec, a conservative author and one of the speakers, said Thursday. Of Trump, he then said: “[There is] a man who will never be destroyed and will never allow America to be destroyed because he loves her too much.”
Trump has exploited his judicial problems to gain Republican support. In South Carolina Friday night he said he resonated with black voters because “they’ve been hurt so badly and discriminated against.” Black voters had “embraced” his mugshot “more than anyone else.”
The comments drew a sharp rebuke from Biden’s campaign and highlight how Trump’s provocative rhetoric risks alienating swing and independent voters who are likely to decide the election. “Donald Trump claiming that black Americans will support him because of his criminal charges is offensive. He’s an idiot. And he’s just racist,” said Cedric Richmond, Biden’s campaign co-chairman.
Nikki Haley called Trump’s comments “disgusting” and called for a return to normalcy in Republican politics.
CPAC was attended by international fans and allies of Trump and the American conservative right, including Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, and even Liz Truss, the former British prime minister who oversaw the collapse of the pound. value and lasted just 50 days in office in 2022.
“Conservatives are now operating in a hostile environment and we essentially need a bigger bazooka to be able to make deliveries,” he told the crowd. In the hallway, a large banner advertised his new book Ten years to save the West.
Also on the list of speakers were some of the most likely candidates to be Trump’s vice presidential pick, from Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, to Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, to the former housing secretary housing Ben Carson and Byron Donalds, a Congressman from Florida.
“I’ll just say it. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris suck,” Noem said. “I have always supported the fact that our next president should be President Donald Trump,” he said.
Among attendees, support for Trump was nearly unanimous. “[Trump] he’s a little annoying and isn’t as nice as he could be. But we need someone like that because China wants to kill us and the left wants to take control of the country. And we can’t be nice anymore,” said Stephen Robinson, an engineer from Virginia.
Even as the United States and its allies marked the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by vowing to remain in Kiev, there was little support among the CPAC audience for additional funding for Ukraine.
There was also little concern about the implications of Trump’s comments earlier this month that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that don’t spend enough on defense.
“I think we gave a lot of aid to Ukraine, I don’t think it should be endless,” said Thea Alfes, who had come to the conference from Connecticut. “We have people sleeping on the streets, we have a huge drug problem, what are we doing to solve this problem?”
Additional reporting by Lauren Fedor in Charleston