By James Simpson
The climax to CPAC this year was President Trump’s speech. He did not disappoint. To raucous laughter and applause, he enumerated the administration’s list of accomplishments interspersed with hilarious, irreverent comments directed at Joe Biden, the Democrats, the deep state, and so forth.
His accomplishments in the first 30 days of his administration are unprecedented. Among my favorites were dumping the Paris climate accords, ending the “Green new scam,” as he called it, which he correctly identified as “one of the greatest hoaxes ever played on this country”; and cancelling the Biden electric vehicle mandate. He reeled off numerous examples of wasteful spending that Elon Musk’s DOGE has already identified, with one of the most ridiculous being, “40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows where… Who are they? Where do they come from? Just sedentary migrants. Nobody even knows what a sedentary migrant is! If they were sedentary, they wouldn’t be a migrant right?” My favorite however, was his pledge to “take back the Panama Canal.”
Trump mentioned foreign leaders in attendance, including presidents Javier Milei of Argentina and Andrezj Duda of Poland, Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico, Nigel Farage, head of the UK Reform Party, Spanish Vox party president Santiago Abascal, and former Brazilian president Eduardo Bolsonaro.
The president also listed some impressive numbers from the election. In addition to winning all the swing states, he won 85 percent of U.S. counties, 2,600 to the Democrats’ 525. He said “it’s the biggest margin ever recorded and incredibly, for the first time ever, all 50 states shifted toward the Republican party, it’s never happened, so [the election] was indeed too big to rig.”
In one of the funnier moments of the speech Trump took an impromptu voice poll of the audience. “You know we lost over a trillion dollars to China this last year under the Biden, crooked Joe Biden. What do we like better — crooked Joe or sleepy Joe? Ready? Ready?” Trump shouted, “Crooked Joe!” Crowd cheered loudly. “Sleepy Joe!” The audience was less enthusiastic. Trump concluded “Got to stay with crooked.”
Trump went on to compare the late former president Jimmy Carter with Biden. Carter has long been considered the worst president in history, but President Trump observed, “Jimmy Carter passed away recently and he passed away a happy man. He was a happy man when he passed cuz he said that it’s not even close. Joe was the worst. And believe me I have to clean up the mess. I’m cleaning up the mess, and it is a mess on the border, with inflation… Everything he touched turned to shit, okay? Everything. It’s true! It’s true!… But now Franklin Graham is angry at me.”
Following some boisterous laughter, he described how Franklin Graham, son of famous preacher, Billy Graham, wrote him a letter saying that while he loved the president’s speeches, he shouldn’t use foul language. But Trump responded that, “You know, sometimes you need it for emphasis.” Franklin disagreed, of course, but Trump concluded, saying, “what word would I use to describe [the things Biden did]… What word could I use? …and we have to be truthful too…” More laughter.