Trump, at CPAC, gives 2-hour speech in praise of himself

Trump took the opportunity to criticize Gen. James Mattis, who left his post as secretary of defense last December because he disagreed with the president’s approach to Syria. “It wasn’t working too well,” he said of Mattis’s tenure, though it was under his leadership that the Islamic State was largely beaten back.

Mattis wasn’t the only current, or former, administration member to come in for criticism from the president. He mocked the Southern accent of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who infuriated Trump by recusing himself from the investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He also criticized, without naming him, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell: “We have a gentleman who likes raising interest rates in the Fed,” a charge he has made several times in recent months.

There were plenty of attacks on the media, with Trump singling out Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel, who in late 2017 had to apologize for a tweet that misrepresented the size of a crowd at a campaign rally. The president also gave an extended reprise of the controversy over the size of the crowd at his Inauguration more than two years ago, including the fact that the people who did turn out to see him did so in spite of the fact that it was raining, and the women in the crowd had to walk long distances “in high heels.”

On the whole, the speech was a deft review of the issues that animate the base of the Republican Party. At one point, he brought on stage Hayden Williams, a conservative activist who had recently been assaulted on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, a favorite target of the right. Trump said he hoped that Williams would grow rich from lawsuits he is expected to file. Trump also said that he would soon be signing an executive order regarding the protection of free speech on college campuses.

Harsh rhetoric on immigration was in order. Trump was unapologetic about having declared a state of emergency in order to seek greater funding for his proposed border barrier. He described the people crossing into the United States from Mexico as “murderers, killers, drug dealers, human traffickers.” He cited a figure about crimes committed by undocumented immigrants from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a not-for-profit group that studies extremism.

The president also stocked fears of gun control, asserting that the Second Amendment was “under siege.” But, he assured the audience, “I’ll protect you. I promise.”

And he hit on a theme that has been popular during the five-day gathering of conservatives, denouncing expanded abortion rights measures in New York and Virginia. “They will execute the baby after birth,” Trump said of the Virginia measure.

The two-hour mark passed, and Trump was still talking, now explaining what went wrong at his summit in Hanoi. “I had to walk because sometimes you gotta walk,” he said. He also took pains to explain his widely criticized remarks about the death of Otto Warmbier — “our beautiful, beautiful Otto” — the Ohio college student who was arrested in North Korea, fell into a coma while imprisoned and died soon after he was returned to the U.S. Before leaving Vietnam, Trump said Kim had assured him he hadn’t been involved in whatever befell Warmbier, “and I take him at his word,” a remark that outraged, among others, Warmbier’s parents. At CPAC, the president appealed for sympathy for his dilemma, having to praise Kim as a friend and good-faith negotiator without alienating people who were outraged by Warmbier’s death. “I’m in such a horrible position,” he said.

It was around this time that members of the audience began to walk toward the doors of the ballroom. Some lingered there, while others left. “Not one person has left,” Trump announced, “and I’ve been up here for a long time.” Only half of that statement was true.

ooo