new York Excitement ran high at the conference center in Orlando, Florida. What would ex-president Donald Trump say about the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Which ones about Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, whom Trump described as a “smart guy” just a few days ago?
The CPAC, the class reunion of the US conservatives, has been meeting in the sunny state on the east coast since Friday. The keynote speaker was Trump. And to the surprise of some observers, he found clear words about the Russian invasion on Saturday evening.
This is a terrible disaster, Trump said. “The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling, it is outrageous and an atrocity that should never have happened. We pray for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless you. You are brave.”
Trump described Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine as ruthless, an “attack on humanity”. Applause erupted from the almost exclusively white audience, as at many other points in his speech.
Trump’s unequivocal condemnation of the attack is a signal – his Republicans are still hesitating on how to deal with Putin’s attack. As recently as Tuesday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, star commentator for the right-wing news channel, described Ukraine as a “western puppet state” that is not a democracy. His viewers had better ask themselves: why hate Putin?
And Trump’s Ohio Senate nominee, JD Vance, declared, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or another.”
Divided Conservatives
Republicans are divided. Some party members admire Putin, others believe the US should stay out of international conflicts, while others call for tougher sanctions against Putin.
Trump knows about the split – and tried to cover it up with a simple message on Saturday evening: The culprit for the Ukrainian disaster is not only in the Kremlin, but above all in the White House.
“We see the relevance of the president now,” Tump exclaimed. Joe Biden, his Democratic successor, is “sleepy, bad, weak, incompetent.” And that has consequences. “If the President is not respected, the world becomes chaotic,” Trump said. “There is no doubt that President Putin made his nefarious decision to attack Ukraine because he had in mind America’s pathetic withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
The situation was very different under his presidency, Trump said: America was respected – and self-confidence would only return with him at the helm. “I got on well with Putin. But no president has been harder on Russia than I have.” Strong words. Alone: Trump failed to explain how he would have handled the Ukraine crisis better.
This is how the Handelsblatt reports on the developments in the Ukraine war:
The ex-president’s harsh condemnation of the Russian invasion is in line with the majority opinion of the electoral base. According to a poll commissioned by the Washington Post on Friday, 62 percent of Republican supporters and a full 79 percent of Democrats support the sanctions against Russia. But only 33 percent of Americans think Biden’s actions are correct.
The growing dissatisfaction with the president is a lever for Trump to get back on the offensive. Only recently did a survey reveal the first frictions between him and his party. Some political observers are already hoping that Republicans could break free of Trump’s grip.
According to this, 50 percent of Republican voters no longer want to talk about the 2020 presidential election, which Trump describes as fake. Only 37 percent still consider the topic to be central. According to another survey, 52 percent of Republican supporters agree that former Vice President Mike Pence could not have overturned the election – only 36 percent believe Trump could have. And Internet searches for terms such as electoral fraud are tending to decrease.
Trump Evergreens
Is this more than a snapshot? There was no sign of waning support for Trump at CPAC. Instead, the “Trump, Trump, Trump” cries of his supporters rang out. “Four more years” was also chanted.
Trump devoted most of his speech on the blue-bathed stage in the cooled conference center not to Ukraine, but to his two favorite topics: illegal immigration and alleged electoral fraud. He didn’t always take the truth very seriously.
“Awake, not woke” was written on the wall: the Republicans should be “awake”, but not “awakened” – an allusion to the left-liberal opinion leaders apostrophized as “woke”. They will stop socialists, communists and anyone who wants to destroy America. “We will defend the Constitution, life and the right to bear arms,” Trump said. “We will arm the police, stop the absurd cancel culture. And we will finish building the wall in three weeks.”
The wall on the border with Mexico is one of Trump’s evergreens. By the end of his presidency, he said, it was almost complete — even if the US Border Protection Agency said there were still 378 miles of planned new and renewed barriers to go.
Trump didn’t bother with such numbers. “Americans deserve a president who takes care of the invasion at home.” The country is being poisoned from within by illegal immigrants, “very dangerous people.” Murders are at a record high, blood is flowing on the streets of democratic cities .
In 2021, three million illegal immigrants came to the country, but maybe “ten, eleven million or more.” Trump did not explain where he got these numbers from. According to the United States Census Buerau, around 1.5 million immigrants came to the United States in 2021, both legal and illegal.
Special praise for the President of Ukraine
The longer his almost one-and-a-half-hour speech lasted, the more repetitive Trump became. Again and again he returned to the alleged voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. In New York illegals would vote, elsewhere fake ballot papers would be shoved en masse into the ballot box. If the electoral fraud continues, the country is doomed.
Trump did not mention that his accusation has now been refuted by numerous court decisions and investigations in all relevant US states. The ex-president was sure to get applause at the CPAC.
In between, Trump shared an anecdote about an alleged conversation with Angela Merkel. He gave the then German chancellor a white flag when she visited the White House. “This is for you,” he said. “Germany gets 75 percent of its energy from Russia. If one day you have a conflict with Russia, you can at least wave the white flag.” Like so many other things on Saturday evening, whether the anecdote was true was uncertain.
Finally, the 45th President of the USA praised his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. At the same time, he stayed in the capital Kiev, which was under fire.
However, the reason for the praise was not Zelensky’s steadfastness towards Putin. But his statement that Trump did nothing wrong in a phone call in 2019. At the time, the US President asked Selenski to compile incriminating material about Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The result was the first impeachment trial against Trump. It failed because of the Republicans in the Senate.
Trump said it was great that Selenski didn’t take part in this “witch hunt by the fake news media”. The Ukrainian is a “brave man”.
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