President Donald Trump says the Rev. Billy Graham is among the few people who deserve to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
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Instead, Trump began to relive his victory nearly 16 months ago over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, as the crowd broke into predictable chants of “Lock her up!”.
“Let’s get it done right”, the President said of action on a variety of fronts to deal with school shootings.
On foreign policy, Pence bragged Trump has convinced allies of the United States in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to spend more on defense and – in a line that received perhaps the greatest applause from the CPAC crowd – touted recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. “Or 100%?” Trump said.
Addressing last week’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Trump again ratcheted up his call for arming teachers and coaches who would be trained to use firearms.
He said: “The guy wouldn’t have had a chance”.
“When we declare our schools to be gun-free zones, it just puts our students in far more danger”. “Resist our policies. Resist our president, and resist the progress the progress that you and I and our entire movement has fought for so hard, so long, to achieve”.
“The recent events and statements being made at CPAC represent one wing of the party dominating the other given its structural position in the White House”, Sam Abrams, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, told Observer.
Trump touted the Republicans’ tax cuts, saying “nobody thought we could do it”. As Trump left the stage, the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” played in the background. “They will take away your Second Amendment, which we will never allow to happen”, the president said to major applause.
“They will take away your Second Amendment”, he said of the Democrats.
Other young conservatives also delighted in tweaking what they said was left-wing identity politics gone mad.
In a rollicking 75-minute address to the premier annual gathering of grassroots conservatives, Trump smashed his enemies, joked about his hair, defended his controversial new gun proposals, and warned conservatives against electoral complacency.
He promised to build a wall along the southern border, bashed Hillary Clinton and bragged about the GOP-led tax overhaul and promised military overhauls.
Trump used the poem, based on Aesop’s fable of the farmer and the snake, on the campaign trail to argue for tighter immigration controls.
“I’m not offended when I hear President Donald Trump say ‘America first, ‘” she said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “I don’t think they had anything to do with the election”.
“Who was that? I don’t know”, Trump said. “I don’t want people that are going to come in and be accepting all of the gifts of our country for the next 50 years and contribute nothing”.
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And though he seemed eager to proclaim the massive tax cuts approved late a year ago, when Trump conducted an informal poll of the audience about which issue mattered more – the tax issue or protecting gun rights – the clear victor was guns.
