The party is me Donald Trump returned to the political scene this Sunday to send a clear and ‘reysolesque’ message to Republicans: he will not loosen his grip on the party, which he has controlled since his historic rise to the White House in 2016 presidential elections. Trump did it at the closing of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the great annual meeting of conservative movements in the US, with which it will be his great weapon: the possibility of running for the presidential elections of 2024. Who will it be, who will it be, I wonder? “Trump said with a conspiratorial gesture on the identity of the next Republican candidate before the public ovation. Before he had warned that “I could decide to go and beat them for the third time”, in a statement that included the possibility of his candidacy and the other great protagonist of the night: the lie that he has been repeating since November, that is, that it was he who he won the election (Joe Biden was victorious by almost seven million votes).

“We have gathered here this afternoon to talk about the future: the future of our movement, the future of our party, and the future of our beloved country,” said the former president. The future, in the vision he uncovered in an hour and a half speech, has his name. He came to equip ‘Trumpism’ – as he called it – with the Republican party and made clear what its main lines will be. First, deny your defeat. Trump repeated the falsehoods he proclaims about the results of the polls since the electoral count, even though his accusations of “theft” and “rigging” have not been supported by his Administration or by the courts. He harshly attacked the Supreme Court – with a 6-3 conservative majority and three justices appointed by Trump himself – for failing to embrace his theories on voter fraud. “They should be ashamed of themselves,” he said of the magistrates. “They didn’t have the guts or the courage to make the right decision.”

Later, Trump denied that he was going to create a new party, as has been speculated at times since he departed from the White House. Such a decision would be a gift to the Democrats, it would divide the Conservative vote. “The party will be more united and stronger than ever and I will not create a new party,” he said. That unity will be for those loyal to Trump. The former president began publicly this Sunday the purge of the few moderates who have turned their backs on him after the tragic assault on the Capitol after an incendiary speech by Trump himself. A handful of deputies and ten senators voted in favor of his ‘impeachment’. Trump read their names one by one, followed by booing from the crowd. “Throw them all out,” he declared.

Trump also attacked the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, with whom he clashed after the senator condemned Trump’s speech before the assault on the Capitol and said he was “morally and practically responsible” for the attack on the headquarters. of popular sovereignty. Trump’s speech closed CPAC, where his dominance of the party has been cemented. The main topics of the conference were those that most concerned the former president – accusations of electoral fraud and censorship by technology companies against conservative voices, with their own Twitter and Facebook accounts blocked – and no one questioned the loss of power of the Republicans with Trump – during his presidency the majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as the White House, have vanished – nor the tragedy and embarrassment in the episode on Capitol Hill. In his speech, the former president did not even mention the assault, as if it had not happened.

Many Republicans who are in the 2024 pools spoke at CPAC. People like Senator Ted Cruz, his bench mate Josh Hawley, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem; or whoever was his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, made an effort to show his closeness to the president and his goals. The former president made it clear that if he is not the candidate, he will seek to impose his. Trump broke the mold as a candidate and as president and in his speech on Sunday made it clear that he will do the same as a former president. Tradition demands that they leave room for their successors. Trump, however, seemed in CPAC again a candidate, even though there are almost four years until the next election.

He recovered the great themes of his first campaign: the hard migratory message, with similar allusions to immigrants as “murderers”, “rapists” or “drug traffickers” with whom he was released as a candidate in June 2015; the culture war, with attacks on the transgender politics of the Democrats and defense of the Judeo-Christian values “of our founders” and patriotic symbols; and with the recovery of the populist economic discourse for the white middle class. It was his first speech as the former president and he did not hesitate to go for his successor “Joe Biden has had the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history” and accused the Democrats of promoting a “radical” agenda that seeks to convert EU “In a socialist country.”