Trump plays the hits at CPAC keynote

National Harbor, Maryland

President Donald Trump capstoned a three-day CPAC pep rally with a message of… well, Trump. To be fair, that’s what virtually everybody else at the conference was speaking about too.

The ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort was packed. In the build-up members of the Trump administration and world leaders had taken the stage, but make no mistake: the attendees were here to see the president himself.

Trump entered to rapturous applause. After his signature move of standing before the podium for the entirety of “God Bless the USA,” he addressed the audience. “We fought through hell together, but in the end, we achieved the great liberation of America,” he said.

“Kamala?” Trump asked himself, as if searching for a forgotten memory. “I haven’t said that name in a while.”

He continued to set the scene about the circumstances of his victory over the Democrats. “I’m cleaning up a mess, and it is a mess. On the border, on inflation — every single thing he touched turned to shit.”

Trump then laid out his first month’s custodial efforts to tackle the mandate placed upon him by the voters of America. He discussed the closing of the border, his disagreement with the courts on birthright citizenship, the dismantling of the Green New Deal, his meetings to tackle the world’s wars — even his plans to see the “nice, beautiful, shiny gold in Fort Knox.”

Observant listeners could easily pick up when the teleprompter would pause, as it waited for Trump to return to the prepared script every time he felt like making a joke or a jab. The president earned a roar of laughter as he read a list of how millions of dollars were going to interests characterized as contrary to the America First agenda.

The levity was blended with the actions of the recently pardoned January 6 protesters, who heckled in the back of the hall, and the recently released October 7 hostages who stood solemnly in the front.

“We are going to forge a new and lasting political majority that will drive American politics for generations to come,” Trump said. But what does the hereafter of the MAGA movement look like?

Fifteen times Trump has spoken at CPAC, and fifteen times he has earned the crowd’s plaudits. Trump the person, more than any one cause, was something that attendees could get behind. Over the years, the Conservative Political Action Conference has slowly evolved into the Trumpian Action Conference; many speakers now offer the recycled charisma of the man who co-opted their political movement, rather than new thoughts on conservative or political ideals.

Yet as the crowd cheered and Trump danced offstage to “YMCA” by Village People, one line stood out: “No man does it all by himself.”