Former President Donald Trump overwhelmingly received a straw ballot after delivering a speech rife with falsehoods on the Conservative Political Motion Convention on Saturday, an annual occasion that has seen diminished crowds this 12 months as many distinguished Republicans declined to attend.
When reporters requested if Trump would keep within the race if indicted, he replied, “Oh, completely, I wouldn’t even take into consideration leaving.” He added that “in all probability it’ll improve my numbers, but it surely’s a really dangerous factor for America. It’s very dangerous for the nation.”
“That is the ultimate battle,” Trump stated dramatically to a skinny crowd. “They realize it, I do know it, it, all people is aware of it. That is it. Both they win, or we win, and in the event that they win, we not have a rustic.”
“We have now no alternative. If we don’t do that, our nation shall be misplaced endlessly,” Trump continued. “Persons are bored with RINOs and globalists. They need to see America First.”
He added, “We had a Republican Social gathering that was dominated by freaks, neo-cons, globalists, open borders zealots and fools. We’re by no means going again to the celebration of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove and Jeb Bush.”
On high of those existential and grandiose remarks, Trump spewed quite a lot of falsehoods. He repeated one among his favourite lies—that he “received the second election” as an alternative of President Joe Biden. He additionally claimed that he had “accomplished” constructing the wall alongside the U.S.-Mexico border, that the Obama administration had solely supplied Ukraine with “blankets,” and that the homicide fee in Manhattan is ”like no one’s ever seen.”
Trump raked in 62% of the vote; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not introduced his intentions to run for the White Home, got here in second with 20% of the vote. 5 p.c of the vote went to Perry Johnson, a businessman who introduced his White Home bid on Thursday and who unsuccessfully ran for the governor of Michigan (he was later {accused} of signing hundreds of invalid nominating signatures by the state’s elections bureau).
The previous president’s straw ballot victory isn’t all that shocking, as he has received the previous 5 CPAC straw polls. At CPAC’s Texas occasion in August, Trump garnered 69% of the vote in comparison with DeSantis’s 24%. Past earlier victories, this CPAC’s explicit win for Trump isn’t all too stunning, as this crowd is acknowledged to be notably pro-Trump.
“That is an viewers that helps President Trump,” stated Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y). Not solely did the occasion provide a lot of Trump-branded gear on the market, however when he walked onto the stage, Trump was launched as “the subsequent president of america.”
Whereas Trump’s likeness was ubiquitous at CPAC, DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence—each seen to be two of Trump’s high 2024 rivals—have been nowhere to be discovered.
