Kafka Would Have A Field Day At Bizarre Republican Conference
Surprisingly, the Conservative Political Action Conference’s (CPAC’s) annual conference for right wing zealots didn’t invite the much maligned, intellectually challenged Herschel Walker or Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y, the man who never met a lie he didn’t like.
But among those glittering bastions of autocracy who did speak at last week’s CPAC were right wing, would-be Brazilian dictator, Jair Bolsonaro; pillow salesman and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell; Arizona gubernatorial sore loser Kari Lake; Chuckie look-alike Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. and the cerebrally compromised, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.; the ex-prez’s son, Don Jr.; and of course the ex-prez, himself.
This motley crew and the conference were assembled by CPAC director, Matt Schlapp, who has been accused of groping a male aide to Herschel Walker’s GOP Senate campaign in Georgia. Just another day at the freak circus.
CPAC, not to be confused with life-affirming CPAP, is the annual clown show featuring the worst the Republican political world has to offer, this year overwhelmingly endorsing re-election of a man who goaded a crowd into violently assaulting the capitol and is under investigation for stealing top secret documents among other crimes. The 49th annual, four-day conference is hosted by the American Conservative Union (ACU) and is attended by far right, conservative activists and elected officials from across the United States and beyond.
The conference annually offers a platform for the most right wing of the right wing and ends with a straw poll for president. Trump won this year as he did in 2021 and 2022. This year’s conference was nothing more than a rehearsed, barely concealed trump campaign rally,, masquerading as a conservative conference.
Noticeably absent were Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence. DeSantis and Pence blew off the CPAC rally, something that would have been political suicide in past years. DeSantis is the likely front-runner to challenge trump for the GOP nomination. Rather than attend CPAC, DeSantis and Pence attended a three-day donor retreat with the politically influential, fiscally conservative group, the Club for Growth, at an exclusive beachfront resort in Palm Beach. Trump, who lives a stone’s throw away at his obscene castle Mar-a-Lago in West Palm Beach, was not invited to the Club for Growth show.
White supremacist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes wasn’t allowed in to the CPAC but he did pose for photographs with Lindell.
Topics at the conference were predictably the Chinese surveillance balloon, attacks on transgender Americans, “wokeness” of the Democrats and blaming Biden for not stopping fentanyl overdoses. There was much that was incredulous, amusing and simply disgusting at the CPAC gathering.
* There’s no more “Lock her up,” because “her” is no longer the bogeywoman on the scene, so the classy collection of undesirables focused their “Lock him up” chant on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, and the chief medical advisor to the president from 2021 to 2022.
Trump reached in his overused, stale, bag of cheap tricks to pull out a promise he made (and broke) in his 2016 bid for the White House. It was on July 21, 2016, when trump told a crowd, “I am your voice. I alone can fix it. I will restore law and order.”
This time, in his keynote speech, while the lemmings yelled “four more years,” trump struck familiar apocalyptic notes, as he promised to make America free. It was a Kafkaesque moment as the man who rallied an insurrection, continues to lie that he won the election and is on the potential verge of multiple indictments.
“America will be free once again. We are not free now. I am your warrior. I am your justice. I am your retribution. I will totally obliterate the deep state. I will fire the unelected bureaucrats who have weaponized our justice system and I will put the people back in charge,” he said. “We have no choice. If we don’t do this, our country will be lost forever. This is the final battle. They know it, I know it, You know it, everybody knows it. This is it. Either they win, or we win and if they win, we no longer have a country.”
Trump also did not fail to mention that he was robbed of reelection by widespread voter fraud, a claim has been debunked by numerous investigations.
* The flag waving, mantra-screaming, MAGA group heard a panel at CPAC speak about the “True Stories of January 6: The Prosecuted Speak.” Panelists included former West Virginia lawmaker Derrick Evans, who resigned from office after his arrest and apologized for his actions in court before he was sentenced to 90 days in prison on a felony charge of civil disorder. Also on the panel was Simone Gold, a founder of America’s Frontline Doctors, an anti-Covid-19 vaccine organization that is among CPAC’s chief sponsors. Gold pleaded guilty to knowingly and unlawfully “entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds” and was sentenced to 60 days in prison and a $9,500 fine for entering the Capitol on Jan. 6.
* An absurd, new recording by a group calling itself “The J6 Prison Choir,” is available for sale and was played at the conference. The choir supposedly represents the insurrectionists who the far right claims are being held so unfairly in jails for their part in the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising. On the recording, the choir sings the National Anthem while they stop periodically as trump is heard reciting the pledge of allegiance with the 2 minute 20 second rendering ending in chants of USA, USA, USA.
Trump has repeatedly praised the mob that stormed the halls of Congress, after he egged them on to force Congress to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has promised to pardon all of the Capitol riot defendants. Proceeds from sale of the J6Prison Choir CD will supposedly be used to raise money for the Jan. 6 defendants through a LLC run by conservative activist Ed Henry. The ultimate destination of proceeds would seem dubious judging by trump’s past misuse of campaign funds to pay his lawyers.
Henry was a correspondent for Fox News until he was fired in 2020 after an investigation by the network into allegations of sexual misconduct.
* Trump also went Willy Wonka as he had gold-wrapped candy bars hidden under seats in the auditorium and anyone who was lucky enough to find one of the bars got “a VIP ticket” to a reception with the former president on Saturday afternoon. Past trump fund raising scams also promised receptions with the president but turned out to be seats at one of his mega rallies.
* In his disgraceful address, Junior trump referred to Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., as a “vegetable,” while the senator, who suffered a stroke in May 2022, recuperates in a hospital from a bout of severe depression, a typical byproduct of a stroke.
* Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., promised to defend Americans’ right to gas stoves and threatened to imprison the Democratic “leftists,” and “Marxists” who “used the awesome power of the federal government to cow us into fear in our homes.”
“They’ve got to be put on notice,” Perry said, “they’ve got to be quaking in fear, they’ve got to be worried, they’ve got to be losing weight because they’re not eating. Because they are worried that they’re going to end up going to jail for using the awesome power of the federal government.”
Perry, a staunch trumper who was involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection, accused the Democrats of “weaponizing” federal agencies. A strong anti-vaxxer, Perry also decried the COVID-19 vaccine mandate announced by the Biden administration in the midst of the pandemic to curb the spread of the virus.
In reference to gas stoves, the congressman referred to a comment made by Richard Trumka, commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), who was nominated by Biden. Trumka said a ban on new gas cooking stoves was being considered because of the fumes emitted by the gas appliances.
However, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, chair of the CPSC, said in January that while emissions from gas stoves could be hazardous, “to be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.”
That didn’t convince Perry from droning about gas stoves and “some experimental potion.”
“The government doesn’t have the right to tell you that you can’t buy a gas stove but that you must buy an electric vehicle. That you can’t go to work but you must put some experimental potion in your arm and then keep showing up to do that to visit your church of worship,” Perry said. “Our personal sovereignty is what this nation was built on, and…it is under assault by every single facet of the government.”
Perry is chairman of the ultra right wing House Freedom Caucus. On Dec. 20, 2021, the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack said it had evidence from several witnesses that Perry had “an important role” in efforts to install Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general as part of trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. According to the committee, Perry introduced trump to Clark. The committee subpoenaed Perry but he refused to participate. The committee has since referred Perry to the House Ethics Panel for refusing their subpoena but is is unclear if the panel will support any action.
Among other shining moments, in October 2017, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Perry accused CNN anchor Chris Cuomo of exaggerating the crisis in Puerto Rico. In January 2018, Perry suggested that ISIS might have been involved in the deadly, 2017 Las Vegas shooting. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, but authorities have maintained that gunman Stephen Paddock acted alone.
In October 2020, Perry was one of 17 Republicans to vote against a House resolution to formally condemn the QAnon conspiracy theory. He said he was concerned about infringements on free speech, saying, “it’s very dangerous for the government … to determine what is okay to like and what is not okay to like.”
* Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., got the crowd pumped when she falsely claimed that Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky wanted “our sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine,” prompting boos from the audience. Greene and other right wing opponents of military aid to Ukraine, have taken Zelensky’s comments wildly out of context.
Actually Zelensky’s words were sobering and quite rationale.
Zelensky predicted that if Ukraine lost the war with Russia because of waning U.S. support, Russia would then invade a country that’s a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance created after World War II. Such an attack could require the U.S. to send troops in defense of an ally, because NATO members are part of a mutual defense treaty, meaning they will defend any member against an external attack.
As part of her non-stop battle against the LGBTQ community and transgender people, in particular, Greene said there are “teenage girls having their breasts cut off and boys that are having their penises turned inside-out.” Greene said that she plans to introduce a bill she is calling the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” that would make it a felony to perform “anything to do with gender-affirming care” for minors.
* Greene’s southern neighbor, Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn. (no relation to Marjorie Taylor Greene but just as nutty), repeated consistently debunked comments about fentanyl and dollar bills.
In a panel on US-Mexico border security and the import of fentanyl, Green repeated unfounded, local police warnings about dollar bills laced with fentanyl, and police agencies claims that officers have experienced overdoses or faced some kind of exposure illness after coming in contact with the drug. Multiple assessments from toxicologists, public health experts, drug policy researchers and law enforcement agencies have said a person cannot be contaminated by dollar bills. Toxicologists, public health experts, drug policy researchers and law enforcement agencies aren’t enough to make Green back down.
“Pick up a dollar, and it’s got fentanyl on it, and you’re dead,” Green said. “Every American is at risk” from fentanyl.
On the subject of illegal drugs, Green and others repeated another baseless claim that the drug crisis is mushrooming under Biden. The fact is that deaths from synthetic opioids soared under trump’s presidency, from 28,659 annual overdose-related deaths in 2017 to more than 56,000 in his final full year in office in 2020. Deaths have continued to climb, with 71,238 in 2021, the most recent data from the CDC, which notes the increase was half of what it was a year earlier, when overdose deaths rose by 30 per cent from 2019 to 2020.
Green has a history of nonsensical, conspiratorial claims. In 2018, Green said at a constituent meeting, “there is some concern that the rise in autism is the result of the preservatives that are in our vaccines.” The claim has long been repeatedly rejected by scientific studies and by medical organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics.
There was also a bit of nostalgia as among those hawking merchandise was former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who signed autographs for his recently published children’s book. Spicer’s new book, “The Parrots Go Bananas,” is a story about Bongo and Asher who are preparing for the biggest ball game of the year. However, a sneaky band of parrots are determined to ruin Bongo and Asher’s reputations by spreading untrue statements about them.
Sounds somewhat familiar, from the man who claimed that crowds at trump’s 2016 inauguration ceremony were the largest ever at such an event and that the press had deliberately underestimated the number of spectators. A while later, Trump aide Kellyanne Conway clarified that Spicer had presented what she called “alternative facts” regarding the inauguration’s attendance numbers.