Speaking Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) convention in Washington, D.C., Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of failed one-term president Donald Trump, tried desperately to get some sort of applause or approval from attendees.
At one point during her speech, Mrs. Trump proudly declared, “Now, some of you may know, Eric and I are blessed to have two beautiful children, our son Luke and our daughter, named after my home state, Carolina. Every night, Eric and I have a tradition. We stop whatever we have going on, and we go do bedtime with the kids.”
“And while they say their prayers and the Pledge of Allegiance, of course, I often think to myself, what kind of country will they live in in 10, 20, or 30 years?” she added. “What kind of country are we creating for our children and our grandchildren?”
Lara Trump says her kids says the Pledge of Allegiance before they go to sleep pic.twitter.com/fNNbMPTfCA
WTF?! Despite the crowd being hardcore Trump supporters whose political leanings are just to the right of Atilla the Hun, Lara’s recitation of her family’s bedtime routine was greeted with silence. You could almost hear crickets chirping.
Twitter/X users had some thoughts on Lara Trump’s comments, too.
For the past few months, we’ve been hearing from conservative Republicans how terrible drag performers are, especially if (gasp!) a child happens to see one of them and start asking questions.
And yet, a great gathering of conservative asshats was held over the weekend in Maryland, a drag queen was in attendance, and it was all perfectly copacetic with the MAGA faithful.
Lady MAGA (a.k.a. Ryan Woods) showed up for the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conclave that featured a keynote address from failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump, and was welcomed by those in attendance, according to Patriot Takes.
Woods used to work for Delta Air Lines, but he was fired a day after the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. At the time, he noted:
“I feel it is obvious they began their investigation he day after the riots while it was socially acceptable to target Trump supporters and claim we’re dangerous. They said my photos with patriots holding guns – way back in November – violated their social media policies. They don’t police other flight attendants’ social media. I feel that I was clearly targeted for my conservative views and support of Trump.”
And yet, right-wingers have been saying in recent months that men dressed as women is somehow a direct threat to every child in the country and to the republic.
In December of last year, Amanda Marcotte of Salon explained why she believes conservatives are apoplectic about men wearing women’s clothes:
Drag, probably more than any other cultural artifact of American life, exposes how much of femininity — and how much of gender overall — is socially constructed. The whole point of drag is to celebrate how much you did not wake up like this. The exaggeration of drag draws attention to the lesser, but still time-consuming, effort that everyday women and other femme-presenting people put into performing their identity. As feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1949, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Drag, like Beyoncé, takes that concept out of the lofty world of academic theory and makes it part of the pop culture understanding of gender.
I have my own theory, and it involves the deep-seated homophobia that conservatives harbor in an attempt to hide their feelings of attraction to members of their own sex.
Twitter users also had some thoughts on the fact that Lady MAGA wasn’t shown the exit.
I thought the GOP was outlawing drag queens? Guess not… when it serves their purpose.
— GOP CLoWN SHoW 🤡: Orange Dictator Rapist❌Immunity (@rbgslegacy) March 6, 2023
So she's fine unless she reads some books to kids, right?
— enlightenm3nt #FightForAmerica (@enlightenm3nt) March 6, 2023
When you really hate yourself, but you really look good in that dress….
A straw poll taken at the end of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference may have appeared to be good news for disgraced one-term former president Donald Trump, but a GOP strategist said Sunday the poll actually contains a “horrible result” for the failed ex-president.
Trump gave the keynote address at CPAC on Sunday and garnered 62% worth of support in the straw poll, but that should concern him, according to Republican strategist Susan Del Percio.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Alex Witt Show,” Del Percio was asked by the host:
“Do you sense this is a party that is ready to move on? What lies ahead for Republicans who want to challenge Trump?”
Del Percio replied:
“Sixty-two percent of CPAC in a straw poll it is a horrible result for Donald Trump. I mean this has been dubbed TPAC; this is Donald Trump’s show, and you can only get 62% of his own people.”
“That is not to say his power over the party is there,” she added. “I read something very interesting in I believe it was Politico or Axios over the weekend. Donald Trump met with the state Republican leadership of Nevada recently at Mar-a-Lago. Donald Trump is playing the campaign strategy that all he needs to do is get 35 percent and beat everyone else and it is winner take all.”
Del Percio concluded her comments by noting, “He still does have that grip and if the other thing that stuck out to me is listening to Governor [Chris] Sununu and Nikki Haley, they come from two different ideas of what the new generation is and I am afraid that Nikki Haley’s new generation of leadership, which is a new generation of hate, as you just showed, is where the party currently is.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQicPJo3OtA
Trump is also facing the prospect of being indicted in multiple jurisdictions, and while he vows not to drop out of the 2024 race if he’s charged with crimes, his poll numbers will likely take a major hit if he is.
For a party that claims to believe in limited government, Republicans who spoke at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) this weekend were creepily focused (even downright obsessed) with the idea that some Americans are transgender, with one speaker even calling for the complete eradication of trans Americans.
HuffPost notes that the assault on trans people began with former Trump administration adviser Sebastian Gorka, who told attendees that the idea of transgenderism is “insanity.”
Gorka … kicked off proceedings Friday morning from the main stage inside the Gaylord Convention Center. Democrats, he warned the crowd, are “mutilating boys and girls” and “sacrificing them on the altar of their transgender insanity.”
“So last Congress, I did something radical and extreme because remember Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘she’s so extreme.’ I introduced a bill called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act. And let me tell you my great news this morning, ladies and gentlemen: It couldn’t pass last Congress because Nancy Pelosi was the speaker of the House. She doesn’t believe in gender at all, but we have a new speaker in our Republican majority… and I’m going to be re-introducing my bill… that will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender!”
But it was right-wing radio host Michael Knowles who sounded every bit like a budding Nazi in Germany circa the 1930s, demanding that the idea of transgenderism be “eradicated from public life entirely.”
“The problem with transgenderism is not that it’s inappropriate for children under the age of 9. The problem with transgenderism is that it isn’t true.
“If [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”
Michael Knowles tells CPAC that "there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. … Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely." https://t.co/57hJF4frgqpic.twitter.com/szvnC1qWrP
Eradicating. The very idea would make Joseph Goebbels giddy with delight.
Just because someone is different doesn’t it make it right to hate them. If this is truly what the GOP stands for, then the entire party needs to be pulled up like a weed and banned from the American political realm.
Colorado Republican extremist Congresswoman Lauren Boebert was one of the featured speakers at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) today in Maryland, and the speech she gave reeked of militancy and threats as she suggested that right-wingers “have the weapons to win” in a battle against Democrats.
Pacing the stage like a caged animal, Boebert repeatedly fired off scripture from the Bible and denounced “the left [that] wants to silence your speech.”
“We are going to make sure that all of these agencies that have been working against you … have an audit and if there is any woke program in these agencies, it is immediately defunded. Every diversity, equity, inclusion program … every woke initiative in our military … must be uprooted and completely defunded.”
The ardent Second Amendment extremist also remarked, “We have truth on our side … This fight has come to us. We didn’t ask for it, but we have the weapons to win this battle against actual evil.”
Near the end of her comments, Boebert told the sparse audience:
“We have just begun winning. Don’t let anyone grow weary in this fight.”
Boebert’s CPAC comments shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. After all, this is the same deranged lunatic who said Jesus wouldn’t have been crucified if he’d had more AR-15 assault rifles around him.
At an event hosted by the Charis Christian Center in 2022, the Colorado Republican said:
“They like to say: ‘Oh, Jesus didn’t need an AR-15. How many AR-15s do you think Jesus woulda had?’ Well, he didn’t have enough to keep his government from killing him.”
She also made reference to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel:
“Cancel culture has been here since the very beginning. Cain canceled Abel. And guess what, it wasn’t with a big, scary AR-15, it was with a rock. So I don’t think it’s a firearm issue, I think it’s a heart, a sin issue.”
