Trump took the stage at CPAC, blasted his own party, and declared, “I am your retribution.”
conservative elements in Trump’s remarks, though they were transmuted into the modern Republican coalition from the debates of yesteryear. While abortion was rarely mentioned on stage at CPAC and gay marriage seemed almost as archaic a topic of political debate as sending aid to the Contras, transgender issues provoked perhaps Trump’s most fervent applause. Trump said, if elected, he would sign a bill banning gender-affirming surgeries for minors, which he characterized as “chemical castration and genital mutilation,” and he received a standing ovation from the ballroom.
The speech felt like yet another milestone for the Republican Party, not just as the conference embraced Trumpism but as the American right embraced a more continental conservatism. Trump spoke only hours after former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s speech, and Brazilian flags could be spotted throughout the crowd, alternating in patches with the Stars and Stripes and, above all, red MAGA hats.
CPAC has increasingly embraced the global right — holding a pro-Viktor Orbán event in Hungary last year and partnering with those who minimized and denied war crimes in World War II in Japan. Not all of this is foreign to American politics — after all, the America First slogan was first used by the isolationists who railed against the United States supporting the Allies in World War II before Pearl Harbor. But this strain of politics had remained submerged on the right, popping up in Pat Buchanan’s speeches and Ron Paul’s newsletters. That’s not the case anymore. The question is just how dominant it will be in 2024 and moving forward.
