Another year, another Washington, DC, CPAC convention—and this one was a doozy. Do you remember how Kamala ran on the concept of joy? Well, the entire conservative movement is running on the concept of joy right now—real joy, not the grim, Democrat-approved fake fun imposed from above, but the genuine article. That was the sense here at CPAC 2025—people were happy, excited, psyched, and joyous.
Why do we have joy? Because of all the winning. And no, we aren’t even close to getting tired of it.
You could feel it in the audience, on the stage and behind it, and, of course, in the bars. That’s my indicator – was the bar packed? During the Biden years, it got a little slow. People weren’t living it up the way we used to. They were quiet, suppressed, Covid-bound, and generally sullen. But this year, the bar was rocking until about 2 AM, and I mean rocking literally – somebody set up a boombox with 80s music, and people were literally dancing around.
JD Trump came in on the first day and did his JD thing. How great is this guy? We knew he would be good, but we had no right to expect that he would take on all these pompous regime media jerks and social media swells and just level them. That’s the problem for these folks – they’ve been so insular and so inward-looking that they’ve never had to deal with somebody who disagrees with them, especially someone who’s exponentially smarter than they could ever be. And yet, they keep stepping up to the plate. How many times is Margaret Brennan going to have him on and be utterly humiliated by him?
One of the best things about JD is how he’s positioning himself to do eight more years of this glorious work, but he’s not alone. We are seeing the sheer quality of the people who have joined up with Donald Trump in this second administration. Let’s face it: the first administration had way too many mediocrities, half-steppers, and establishment slugs. It wasn’t really Trump’s fault. He didn’t have a giant Rolodex of names to pick from in 2016 because he had barely been to Washington DC before beating Hillary. But now he has four years of experience and spent the last four years figuring out exactly what he would do once he Grover Clevelanded. Now he’s gotten into the office again and doing it.
Promises made, promises kept.
The result is a Republican base that is ecstatic. At one point, during the main stage appearance by me and Larry O’Connor, along with social media influencer ALX, people were doing the Trump dance in the audience. That’s the thing about the Trump dance. It’s fun. They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats – that’s fun. Winning is fun. And what’s the other side offer? Misery, self-flagellation, and “chicks” peeing standing up. No thanks.
Elon Musk showed up, and the Argentinian president gave him a bureaucracy-cutting chainsaw, which he swung around like a Leatherface on stage. It was glorious. The audience was thrilled, and he was excited to be there. But you know, Elon probably is not as conservative personally as we are. He was blackpilled by the attacks on him when he stepped out of line under Biden. But this guy is not a conservative by any means, yet he’s a welcome part of our coalition. That’s another part of the beauty of what’s happening – this is a coalition. There’s not a lot of theological purity going along. If you walk down media row – and mediate row was longer than I’ve ever seen it, and I’ve been coming here for a decade – you get to the Make America Healthy Again booth. If I remember correctly, a year ago, Robert F Kennedy, Jr., was a liberal democrat, but now he’s head of HHS. And we’re happy about it.
Oh, there are some people who are unhappy about it. I guess winning makes them nervous. National Review put out a cover story warning about not getting too attached to winning after only 30 days. Yeah, we better find that cloud behind the silver lining. Some people just don’t want to win, but those people weren’t at CPAC. I did encounter one guy from the Bulwark, walking around, looking at us as if he were Margaret Mead among the Samoans. I asked him why he wasn’t at Cuckfest – all the Never Trump losers that nobody cares about were having their own event somewhere down the road. The audience was approximately as big as the speaker's list. The only people excited about them gathering in Washington, DC, were their pool boys.
Of course, the president came and was amazing as usual. I did not watch him live, not because I don’t like seeing the president – I’ve had a chance to see him several times here – but because the crowd was just too big, and I don’t like crowds. It was a glorious topper to a great convention-- a convention that was simply amazing. Things were happening every single day we were here. The FBI director is now Kash Patel, if you can imagine it. This is happening. This is real. And it doesn’t stop. Friday night, as we were sipping beers, we got word that a bunch of woke generals and admirals in the Pentagon had been fired. The winning never seems to end.
And there were well-deserved victory laps. The great Julie Kelly, whose defense of the J6 political prisoners has been second to none, once again had a prime showcase. The media tried to make something out of some fringe J6 people who had a beef with the Secret Service, but CPAC has always been 100% behind these political prisoners. The regime media tried to build up fake controversies with lies and innuendo, and do you know what happened? Nothing. No one cared. We don’t listen to them anymore. That was the point of Larry’s and my presentation – the regime media doesn’t get a vote anymore. We weren’t complaining about the regime media and its headlock on social discourse anymore. They defended their gates while we’ve torn down their walls. We were laughing at its total ineptitude in the face of new media.
That was CPAC 2025, the laughing, smiling, and dancing. These are great times. This is a golden age. I guess National Review is right in the macro—it won’t last forever, and there will be bad days in the future. But these are the good days. This is an amazing moment. We must embrace it and keep it going as long as we can.
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