Tonight, Donald Trump will address the nation at a joint session of Congress, although it appears a significant number of Democrats won’t sit in the House chamber to hear his rant. And it will be a racist, xenophobic rant. How do we know? Well, it’s Trump. But also, we saw the preview last weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
This year’s CPAC took place again in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., just a few weeks into Trump’s second term. In the past, CPAC was able to at least superficially distinguish itself from the hateful rhetoric of fringe extremists, including by featuring mainstream Republican speakers like then-Governor Ronald Reagan. CPAC is now just a breeding ground for white nationalist conspiratorial rot. As Gabe Ortíz of America’s Voice noted last year, that despite losing its credibility throughout the years and becoming a platform for American Nazism to flourish, CPAC has basically become a Republican message testing ground. Because they are not secretive of their anti-democratic and xenophobic plans, it’s not hard to plan out their next moves, just from CPAC alone.
At last year’s conference, NBC’s headline, “Nazis mingle openly at CPAC, spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and finding allies,” described the agenda in one sentence which would be a foreshadow of the conference moving forward. Our evaluation about last year’s CPAC was proven correct this year. Not only were notable far-right extremists like convicted fraudster Steve Bannon, Ben Shapiro and unelected president Elon Musk featured speakers, but so were the “mainstream” Republicans who control our government, including Speaker Mike Johnson and most notably Vice President JD Vance and President Donald Trump. Other speakers included Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Florida Senator Rick Scott, “border czar” Tom Homan, and Elise Stefanik, the former House Republican Conference Chair and now Trump’s nominee for U.N. ambassador.
These speakers all had something to gain from this conference. For some, it was to come out on top on who can be the most xenophobic and racist. For others, it wasn’t to spark intellectual conversations about policymaking that could help the vast majority of Americans, but instead to lead the charge in destroying American democracy. For Americans who want to help save American democracy, the speakers and what they say is something that needs to be paid attention to. Importantly, the conference this year proved to be what we predicted a year ago: that white nationalist rhetoric will only get worse with Trump in office.
Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor and Steven Miller’s close ally, was supposed to be the “big speaker” of the first night but he was outshined by none other than MAGA’s current darling of the moment, billionaire Elon Musk. Bannon is not new to this world. He has historically been an outspoken white nationalist by setting up the racist propaganda outlet, “Breitbart News,” and was at the forefront of the Big Lie to “get it [2020 election] decertified.” In 2016, Time magazine even wondered aloud if Bannon was “the second most powerful man in the world?” When Bannon was appointed by Trump to be his chief strategist, David Duke, a notorious white supremacist and a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, called the appointment “excellent.” This “excellent” candidate was soon ousted by Trump’s administration (though don’t give them too much credit, it was largely due to outrage from lawmakers and the public), and soon fell out of Trump’s support. Now more than ever, with Musk and DOGE getting all the attention, Bannon knows he’s old news. Bannon has consistently brought up his discontent with Musk, calling him “a truly evil person” and “a parasitic illegal immigrant.” He hates Musk and the tech bros’ immigration plan of expanding the H-1B visa, calling the program a “scam of the highest order.” But even with all the hate, Bannon still knows he needs to follow the footsteps of Musk to stay popular within the party.
Musk’s recent hand gestures that had many observers calling him out as a Nazi left the white nationalists giddy with joy. Musk has continued to deny that what you saw with your own eyes just wasn’t so, and that his straight-armed gesture that looked an awful lot like a Nazi salute was just a “friendly” wave. Right. But then why did Bannon copy Musk’s hand gesture at the end of his speech while shouting “Fight! Fight! Fight”? If it meant nothing, Bannon wouldn’t have copied Musk. But he and another speaker, a Mexican actor named Eduardo Verástegui, both did it because there is a meaning to their base. While these figures likely laugh behind the scenes at the fact that it gets the mainstream press in a pretzel in trying to describe their actions, their base gets exactly what it is.
It also signaled a very important shift within the Republican party, that they are at the point of accepting and mainstreaming the same ideologies as Nazism and deadly white nationalist conspiracies like the great replacement conspiracy theory. But even for some extreme leaders, this went too extreme. France’s far-right National Rally leader, Jordan Barbella, canceled his appearance because “one of the speakers allowed himself, as a provocation, to make a gesture referring to Nazi ideology.” Bannon doesn’t want to be the loser of the talent show that he built.
It foretells that the right-wing currently controlling the levers of our country’s government is ready to dig deeper into the fascist rabbit hole. And, now they do it in the service of Trump.
Musk’s speech was no different. His speech was full of anti-immigrant xenophobic rhetoric that included the great replacement conspiracy theory, which has spurred multiple domestic terrorist attacks in recent years. Musk said, “I think it is really important for people to understand that the Biden administration sent any possible money that they could send, if there was money they could send to facilitate and amplify illegal immigration, they sent it.” He copied Trump’s white nationalist language and vocalized the Big Lie 2.0 as an effort to “build a new class of voter”:
“You don’t actually have to assume some grand conspiracy, you just need to look at basic incentives. Fundamentally, the probability that an illegal is going to vote Democrat at some point, whether it’s cheating, but eventually they become citizens—probability, probably, like 80 or 90 percent.
Then the incentive is to maximize the number of illegals in the country. That is why the Biden administration was pushing to get in as many illegals as possible and spend every dollar possible… because every one of them is a customer. Every one is a voter. So the whole thing is a giant voter importation scam.”
The trend of reiterating the same language as domestic terrorists and white nationalists continued during the whole conference. Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called border czar, used the same rhetoric during his speech. He even said “I’ll take” being called “a white nationalist,” as well as continued to complain that Democrats are “educating people to their rights.” Once again, knowing your rights is perfectly legal. Nonetheless, this rhetoric was picked up by multiple other GOP Congressional members, showing that if you follow CPAC, you’ll know the Republicans’ gameplan.
Vice President JD Vance followed the trend and used the same talking points he made in Munich, stating that the “greatest threats” to the western civilization is “letting millions and millions of unvetted illegal migrants come into our country.” Vance also espoused the virtues of masculinity, but notably refused to defend his own family from racist attacks.
Trump was the final speaker at CPAC. He preached to his choir to flaunt his white nationalist vision for America. His speech, filled with hatred and white nationalism, laid his cards for all to see when it comes to the specific plans he has to make America White again. It was a stark contrast from his speech last year last year, where he avoided using terms like “mass deportation” due to the election year. This year, Trump’s chaotic efforts to break down American democracy have been right there in the open. Using “invasion” to denote a conspiratorial and false sense of danger and violence coming to the U.S. by hard working immigrants, Trump stated that “we declared a national emergency at our southern border,” “signed an order that will end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens…wasn’t meant for people that escaped or invaded came into our country illegally.” All the while he proclaims that the “invasion is over” when it wasn’t one to begin with. Their plans are not a secret.
If you follow the stink, you’ll know where it’s going. CPAC is exactly the event that must be followed to keep tabs on the further devolution of the Republican party and its downfall. Their plans are not being hidden on the dark corners of the web or only talked behind closed doors, it is open for all to see their unbashful embracement of being a white nationalist party of the USA. Their agenda is the agenda of the Trump administration and the GOP.
And, it will be on full display tonight from Trump in the House chamber.
