When the annual Conservative Political Action Conference — CPAC for short — kicks off Thursday in Orlando, Fla., it might as well be called TPAC.
That's because this year, it is all about Trump.
The former president will headline the event with a Sunday afternoon keynote address, his first speech since leaving office last month.
It comes as the Republican Party is struggling with its identity after Donald Trump's presidency. And yet CPAC, the largest gathering of conservative activists in the U.S., will still very much be a pro-Trump event.
The conference, organized and sponsored by the American Conservative Union, will even keep alive Trump's false claims of election fraud with several panels on the topic with names like "Other Culprits: Why Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence," "The Left Pulled the Strings, Covered It Up, and Even Admits It" and "Failed States (PA, GA, NV, oh my!)."
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"We're going to spend a lot of time looking at what happened in these states," Matt Schlapp, chairman of the ACU, said on CNN this week. Schlapp claimed to have "proof" of "widespread voter fraud in the last election," yet presented none on air.
He went on to say that "Joe Biden is my president" and that "he won the election," but then pivoted, raising suspicion: "That doesn't mean that there wasn't voter fraud and voter irregularity in the last election."
Schlapp — a lobbyist and husband of Mercedes Schlapp, who worked in the Trump White House — is walking the same line other Republicans have been, between the truth and conspiracies that are popular with Trump and his base.
CPAC didn't used to be so MAGA. In fact, Trump snubbed the conference in 2016 after a dispute over speech ground rules and wanting him to answer questions at the event.
Five years later, though, the political world — as well as the grassroots conservative movement — has changed substantially.
And, now, at this annual cattle call, there's no penning Trump in.
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In his speech, Trump is expected to draw distinctions with President Biden, particularly when it comes to immigration, which was an animating issue for the GOP base during Trump's political tenure.
He is also expected to speak about the future of the Republican Party, and he very much wants to be seen as not just a player but the player — the "presumptive 2024 nominee," in fact, as Axios reports.
Trump's dangling of running again has effectively frozen the GOP field. CPAC has, for decades, been a place where presidential hopefuls have tested out their messages and possible depth of support.
A handful of would-be presidential hopefuls will be on hand this year, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, as well as Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri.
They are in an awkward holding pattern, but while ambitious potential candidates might want Trump out of the way, they want his voters even more.
That's why people like former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump's former ambassador to the United Nations, tried to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, to make sure they're still on good terms.
But after Haley was critical of the former president in a recent profile, Trump reportedly turned down the meeting. As of Wednesday evening, Haley is not on the CPAC speakers list.
