Donald Trump plots Republican Party revenge in CPAC address

Basking in admirers’ acclaim, Donald Trump will lay out his vision for the party at the key Republican conference, CPAC.

Donald Trump will lay out his vision for the Republican Party this weekend in his first public appearance since leaving the White House last month.

For weeks the former president has been hunkered down at his Florida private members club, basking in the acclaim of his admirers there, playing golf and receiving visits from conservative politicians eager to secure his support.

Banned permanently from Twitter and facing investigations into his businesses, Trump was less present in American public life over the past month than at any time since he began his long-shot campaign for the presidency in 2015.

Donald Trump grins as he drives past supporters in West Palm Beach, Florida. Picture: Getty Images.

However, his headline appearance on the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday will accelerate his return to the political fray, which began last week when he was acquitted in his unprecedented second impeachment trial and subsequently unloaded a vicious broadside at his chief rival to steer the future direction of his party: the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.

He then gave several interviews to sympathetic news outlets last week about the death of his friend, the hard-right radio host Rush Limbaugh, during which he repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Trump has been a star guest at CPAC for a decade and during his presidency the event became a celebration of his administration. It remains an important destination for ambitious Republicans mulling their own tilt at the presidency, and this week’s event will be attended by several of the most likely contenders for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, including Trump himself, his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, the senators Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz and a high-profile Trump loyalist, the South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Mike Pence, the former vice president who broke with Trump to certify President Biden’s election victory, has reportedly declined an invitation to speak.

The gathering promises to expose the deep rifts in Republican ranks over whether to embrace Trump’s enormous popularity with hardline conservatives or pursue a more moderate strategy aimed at recovering the suburban swing voters who have helped Democrats capture the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House in the past two years.

Yesterday, Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, told CNN that Trump “should not define our future” and added that he “would not support him for re-election in 2024”.

Yet in an indication of Trump’s grip on the party Steve Scalise, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, refused to acknowledge yesterday on ABC TV’s This Week that the 2020 election was not stolen, conceding only that “once the electors are counted, yes [Biden’s] the legitimate president”.

Scalise visited Trump last week at his Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago where he has also received Kevin McCarthy, the lead Republican in the House of Representatives.

He has rejected meetings with several other Republican politicians, and has instead spent the past month playing golf, phoning friends, binge-watching cable news and relishing the standing ovations from guests whenever he appears for dinner on the outdoor patio, Politico reported.

Trump was found not guilty of inciting an insurrection at the Capitol on January 6 by the United States Senate last week. After the verdict McConnell, who voted to acquit him on a constitutional technicality, then condemned him anyway as “practically and morally responsible” for the violence.

Trump responded by calling the Senate leader a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack” and declaring that with people like McConnell in charge “the Republican Party can never again be respected or strong”.

The Times