Donald Trump’s CPAC speech: Crowd cheers as former president repeats false claim that he won the 2020 election

Donald Trump spent much of his big speech today repeating his claims about the election. The conservative audience’s reaction was telling.

Donald Trump has made his first formal public appearance since leaving office on January 20, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida.

Mr Trump was initially expected to speak at 3.40pm local time, but the former president ended up taking the stage closer to 5pm.

The audience of conservative activists greeted him with a standing ovation, and later chanted, “You won!” at the former president, who spent much of the speech repeating his false claims about the 2020 election.

He also came armed with a new list of political enemies, telling his supporters to “get rid of” the Republicans who voted in favour of his impeachment last month.

“Hello CPAC. Do you miss me yet? Do you miss me?” Mr Trump asked as he began his speech. The crowd roared in response.

“I stand before you today to declare that the incredible journey we began together — we went through a journey like nobody else. There’s never been a journey like it. There’s never been a journey so successful.

“We began it together four years ago, and it is far from being over.

“For the next four years, the brave Republicans in this room will be at the heart of the effort to oppose the radical Democrats, the fake news media and their toxic cancel culture.

“I am going to continue to fight right by your side. We will do what we’ve done right from the beginning, which is to win.”

Mr Trump was the first sitting US president to lose an election since George H.W. Bush in 1992.

No other president has seen his party lose the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives in a single term since Herbert Hoover in the 1930s.

Nevertheless, about 10 minutes into the speech, Mr Trump told CPAC he’d actually won.

“Actually, as you know, they just lost the White House,” he said of the Democrats.

“But who knows? Who knows? I may even decide to beat them for a third time.”

He got another standing ovation for that line.

As always, here is your obligatory reminder that President Joe Biden won the electoral college vote 306-232, and won the popular vote by a margin of roughly seven million.

In the post-election period, Mr Trump and his allies launched more than 60 lawsuits challenging the results, which went nowhere.

Judges of all political persuasions, including several conservatives appointed by Mr Trump himself, berated the then-president’s legal team for providing no credible evidence to support its claims of widespread fraud.

RELATED: Donald Trump Jr’s awkward joke at CPAC

Donald Trump taking the stage at CPAC. Picture: Sky News

Moving on, Mr Trump told CPAC he was “not starting a new party”, stamping out speculation that popped up after he left office.

“We’re not starting new parties. You know, they kept saying, ‘He’s going to start a brand new party.’ We have the Republican Party,” he said.

“It’s going to unite, and be stronger than ever before. I am not starting a new party. That was fake news. Fake news. No.”

Mr Trump directly targeted his successor, Mr Biden, saying he’d endured “the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history”.

“We all knew that the Biden administration was going to be bad, but none of us even imagined just how bad they would be and how far left they would go,” he said.

“I predicted the extremism, corruption and incompetence of the Biden administration would be literally unprecedented in American history. Unfortunately, he has proven me 100 per cent right.

“They are anti-jobs, anti-family, anti-borders, anti-energy, anti-women and anti-science.

“In one month we have gone from America first to America last.”

Mr Trump said his successor had endured a “disastrous” first month in office. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP

He proceeded to run through a varied list of critiques, slamming Mr Biden on issues such as illegal immigration, climate change, coronavirus restrictions, gun rights, wind power and women’s sport.

“It took the new administration only a few weeks to turn this unprecedented accomplishment (Mr Trump’s own immigration policies) into a self-inflicted humanitarian and national security disaster,” the former president said.

“By recklessly eliminating our border security measures, controls, all the things we put into place, Joe Biden has triggered a massive flood of illegal immigration into our country like we’ve never seen before.”

He accused the President of putting “the vile coyotes back into business”, referring to people smugglers at the southern border.

US immigration authorities made more than 75,000 arrests at the border in January, a rise of 6 per cent from December.

The Biden administration has also reopened a Trump-era detention facility for unaccompanied minors, saying coronavirus rules have adversely impacted existing facilities’ capacity.

The number of unaccompanied minors arriving in the US is higher now than it was at any point in 2020, though it’s about half the level we saw in early to mid-2019.

Mr Trump speaking at CPAC today. Picture: Sky News

The issue of women’s sport has come up in response to the Equality Act, proposed legislation which would outlaw discrimination against people based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Most Republicans believe it is a threat to religious liberty.

The legislation has passed the House but appears unlikely to make it through the Senate. Mr Biden supports it.

“Joe Biden and the Democrats are even pushing policies that would destroy women’s sports,” Mr Trump said.

“A lot of new records are being broken in women’s sports. Hate to say that ladies, but you’ve got a lot of new records. They’re being shattered.

“Young girls and women are incensed that they are now being forced to compete against those that are biological males. It’s not good for women, it’s not good for women’s sports.

“The records that stood for years, even decades, are now being smashed with ease. Smashed. If this is not changed, women’s sports as we know it will die. It’ll end.

“We must protect the integrity of women’s sports. So important.”

This part got another standing ovation. Shortly afterwards, there was a spontaneous chant of “we love you”.

The crowd at #CPAC chants "we love you" during Trump's speech pic.twitter.com/RXdLZfZ8jQ

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 28, 2021

Mr Trump eventually circled back to his false claims about the election.

“The Democrats used the China virus as an excuse to change all of the election rules without the approval of their state legislatures, making it therefore illegal,” he said.

The former president was referring to efforts by state governments — both Democratic and Republican — to make voting by mail easier in 2020, due to fears that voting in person could lead to the virus spreading.

His argument that changing the rules was “illegal” got litigated extensively after the election. Judges did not find it persuasive.

“We have a very sick and corrupt electoral process that must be fixed immediately. This election was rigged,” Mr Trump continued.

“And the Supreme Court and other courts didn’t want to do anything about it.”

The crowd responded by chanting: “You won! You won!”

“We did,” he agreed.

“If you just take that one element, where they didn’t go through legislatures, it’s illegal. You can’t do it. It’s in the Constitution!

“They didn’t have the courage, the Supreme Court, they didn’t have the courage to act, but instead used process and lack of standing.

“I was told the president of the United States had no standing. It’s my election, it’s your election. We have no standing. We had almost 20 states go into the Supreme Court so that we didn’t have a standing problem. They rejected it.

“They should be ashamed of themselves for what they’ve done to our country. They didn’t have the guts or the courage to make the right decision. They didn’t want to talk about it.”

Mr Trump was referring to a lawsuit filed by the Republican Attorney-General of Texas, Ken Paxton, and supported by 17 other state attorneys-general.

Mr Paxton alleged that four swing states Mr Trump lost to Mr Biden had changed their rules governing mail-in voting too close to the election. He wanted the Supreme Court to order that all four states ignore their popular vote totals, which showed Mr Biden winning, and choose their presidential electors via their state legislatures instead.

All four of the state legislatures in question were controlled by Republican majorities.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, immediately threw the case out for lack of standing under Article III of the US Constitution.

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognisable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” the court ruled.

Under the Constitution, each American state sets its own electoral rules, and no other state gets a say in the matter. So, for example, Pennsylvania cannot sue Texas if it doesn’t like how that state’s system works, and vice versa. The only way to challenge the rules in Texas would be to sue from within Texas.

Hence the Supreme Court’s decision, which was predicted by pretty much every elecion law expert in the country the moment Mr Paxton’s lawsuit was filed.

Irvine School of Law Professor Rick Hasen called it “the dumbest case I’ve ever seen filed on an emergency basis at the Supreme Court”, Texas School of Law Professor Steve Vladeck said it was “indefensible nonsense”, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law Professor Eugene Mazo labelled it “the dumbest case any lawyer has ever seen”, and yes, OK, I think you get the picture.

Mr Trump reckons the Supreme Court dudded him. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP

Anyway, Mr Trump was not quite done talking about the election.

“It is undeniable that election rules were illegally changed at the last minute in almost every swing state, with the procedures rewritten by local politicians - you’re not allowed to do that - and local judges. They want more time, they want this, they want that,” he said.

“These are numbers that are massive. These aren’t little numbers. These are numbers that in each state is a transformative number. It changes the outcome of the election.”

This, too, is incorrect.

In Pennsylvania, for example, the Trump campaign sued over about 10,000 mail-in ballots that arrived after election day. The state Supreme Court had unilaterally extended the deadline for such ballots to be counted, and the then-president’s legal team said that was illegal.

The ballots in question were excluded from Pennsylvania’s election result while that litigation was pending.

In any case, Mr Biden’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania was 81,000, meaning there were nowhere near enough contested ballots to change the result.

Mr Trump also brought up the fact that Republican candidates performed fairly well in the House of Representatives, despite his own defeat. He cited this as evidence that the presidential election was rigged.

“How the hell is it possible that we lost? It’s not possible,” he said.

Americans’ votes for president and for Congress are cast on the same ballot. The simple explanation here is that a significant number of people chose to split their support, going for Republican congressional candidates while voting for Mr Biden over Mr Trump.

Finally, as expected, Mr Trump took aim at several Republican leaders who criticised him in the wake of the Capitol riot on January 6, calling them out by name.

“Democrats don’t have grandstanders like Mitt Romney, little Ben Sasse, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey,” he said.

Those seven Republican senators voted in favour of convicting him for inciting an insurrection against the US government. The final margin in the Senate impeachment trial was 57-43 - the majority of senators voted guilty, but nowhere near the 67 needed for conviction.

Mr Trump also named the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment in the House, including the party’s third-highest ranking member in the chamber, Congresswoman Liz Cheney. The crowd booed all of them enthusiastically.

“The good news is, in her state she’s been censured. And in her state, her poll numbers have dropped faster than any human being I’ve ever seen. So hopefully they’ll get rid of her,” he said of Ms Cheney.

“Get rid of them all.”

Mr Trump promised he would work to help “strong” Republicans get elected in the 2022 midterm elections.

Mr Trump urged Republican voters to “get rid” of the politicians who voted to impeach him. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP

Shortly before Mr Trump’s scheduled start time, CPAC announced the result of its annual straw poll. Attendees voted for who they wanted to represent the Republican Party as its next presidential nominee in 2024.

Mr Trump won with 55 per cent of the vote, followed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with 21 per cent and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem with 4 per cent.

Some other names to draw support were: former UN ambassador Nikki Haley (3 per cent); Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (2 per cent); and Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul (2 per cent).

Notably, Mr Trump’s vice president Mike Pence got just 1 per cent.

Mr Pence’s standing among Mr Trump’s supporters has fallen sharply since the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory on January 6, when Mr Trump falsely insisted his vice president had the power to unilaterally reject the electoral college votes.

The straw poll also measured the various candidates’ support without Mr Trump in the field. Mr DeSantis led with 43 per cent, followed by Ms Noem with 11 per cent, Mr Trump’s son Donald Jr with 8 per cent and Mr Pompeo with 7 per cent.

Again, Mr Pence was stuck on 1 per cent.

Interestingly, while 95 per cent of CPAC’s attendees wanted the Republican Party to keep advancing Mr Trump’s agenda, far fewer of the conservative activists – 68 per cent – thought he himself should run for president again.