Americana

How Ukraine became a dirty word at CPAC

THE SCENE

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Republicans who flocked to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference brimmed with reasons to re-elect Donald Trump. The biggest: world peace.

“Stop the bipartisan warmongers in Washington who constantly beat their war drums, who have pushed us to the precipice of World War III and a nuclear catastrophe,” said ex-Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat-turned-independent now seen as a potential Trump running mate.

“We gotta get it over to Donald Trump to stop it,” Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said, in an onstage discussion about ending U.S. aid to Ukraine. “He knows there’s no winning for Ukraine. He can work a deal with Putin.”

Two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, four months into the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the 50th annual gathering of conservatives described America’s foreign entanglements as mistakes, blundered into by Joe Biden and the “globalists” who backed him.

There was no appetite at the Gaylord National Harbor for continued Ukraine war funding, stalled in Congress by a conservative bloc of House Republicans. The Republicans who supported the war effort, including Nikki Haley, didn’t make the trip, and wouldn’t have been welcomed if they did. Some politicians, said former Trump national security official Kash Patel on Friday, were captured by a defense industry that “sent our sons and daughters to die for other peoples’ fights.”

That attitude, once held by a frustrated faction of the conservative movement, was universal at what’s now a resolutely pro-Trump conference. In a shrunk-down exhibit hall, where attendees could play a Jan. 6-themed pinball game or sample Woke Tears Water — sold by a Ukrainian immigrant — the John Birch Society had reserved two booths, loaded with copies of “New American” magazine.

“We just can’t keep printing money and funding foreign wars and globalism,” said Michael Smart, a JBS coordinator in Virginia.

At the same time, there was no public display of the pro-Russian revisionism that’s been popular on parts of the right — and there were frequent disavowals of Vladimir Putin.

“I don’t think everybody’s rooting for Putin. They don’t know what the plan is,” CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp told Semafor. “When I hear [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy talk, I don’t think he’s ever explained what the strategy is. He’s said he’s in a desperate situation, running out of ammunition, but how many times do American taxpayers have to write a big check to prolong a conflict?”

At a Thursday panel about the Freedom Caucus’s work in the House, which included stopping war funding, the rationale was clear. “This bit where we just give billions and billions of dollars of American treasure away is unacceptable,” said Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry. “Nobody — not me, not us, not anybody — agrees with what Vladimir Putin and Russia has done. Not any of us. But the Biden administration, or anybody else, hasn’t told us what the endgame is. How are we spending all your hard earned tax money over there? Where do we finish this thing?”

DAVID’S VIEW

Here’s the short story of CPAC and the right over the last 10 years. First, Ron Paul’s two presidential bids built a beachhead for anti-interventionism inside the party; Paul frequently won the once-suspenseful presidential straw poll. Then, Trump ran for president and won, promising to “bomb the hell out of ISIS,” and exit the Iran nuclear deal, but otherwise reduce America’s international footprint.

Finally, Trump lost the 2020 election. (Not everyone at CPAC agrees.) Every international disaster since then has been interpreted as proof that the Trump approach worked, and that the Biden approach didn’t. Yes, there’s a faction of the right rooting for Putin to win. Far more popular is the idea that Putin feared Trump — everyone did — and that brought peace.

“If you want to avoid war, you need tough diplomacy,” former Trump Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell said on Thursday. “The Democrats made fun of tough diplomacy. Every one of our ambassadors, every time President Trump used tough diplomacy, the Democrats mocked it. I have to say to you: You better have an SOB diplomat if you want to avoid war.”

The 2022 edition of CPAC began just as the Russian invasion did, and the mood was different. Gabbard, then making her first steps into the conservative movement, asked for a moment of silence in support of suffering Ukrainians; support for its military defense wasn’t really questioned.

One year later, 79% of CPAC attendees who voted in the 2023 conference straw poll disapproved of further military funding for Ukraine. The stalemate in the House now was predictable then: Republicans, especially pro-Trump Republicans, described a binary choice between defending the U.S.-Mexico border from asylum-seekers and smugglers, and defending Ukraine’s borders from a military invasion.

“Joe Biden, which country matters more to you: The border of the United States or the border of Ukraine?” Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, who some Republicans see as a potential Trump running mate, said Thursday. On Friday, former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, also seen as likely to join a second administration, described how the military could “establish a fortress position on the border,” a far bigger priority for CPAC attendees than Ukraine.

Ukraine supporters are not exactly convinced the argument is sincere, as opposed to a fig leaf for a broader pro-Russian tilt under Trump, especially after Republicans rejected a bipartisan deal to crack down on asylum seekers and pump billions of dollars into border operations. But the framing is ubiquitous on the right at every level, from politicians, to commentators, to rank-and-file Republican voters.

“This administration — I don’t trust ‘em to get any type of aid. They’ve already gotten over $100 billion,” said South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, in an interview this week before a Haley rally in his district.

Norman was Haley’s sole endorser in Congress, but even he wasn’t willing to support Ukraine funding without border funding, a difference with his candidate — and, because House Republicans rejected the Senate’s border compromise, a non-starter. “To be honest with you, I wouldn’t vote for funding for Ukraine without the border,” he said. “We’re broke as it is.”

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

One of the only Republicans arguing that a second Trump term would make Americans less safe is Haley, who was spending the weekend at her final campaign stops before the South Carolina primary. “The only way we prevent war is if Ukraine defeats Russia in this instance, because otherwise that puts us all at war,” Haley told NPR this week. She has also criticized Trump for his warm words towards Putin. None of it has worked so far.

“We spent most of my adult life hating Russia, and then we changed to China,” said former South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson, a Haley endorser. “People just aren’t scared of Russia like they used to be of the Soviet Union.”

NOTABLE

• In the Wall Street Journal, Molly Ball looks at CPAC and beyond to explain why conservatives oppose Ukraine funding: “Numerous attendees said they had watched and been impressed by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s recent friendly interview with Putin.”
• In Politico, Ben Jacobs finds a confused CPAC reception for Liz Truss, the short-serving U.K. prime minister: “One request for a selfie came from Barbara Coward, a suburban Baltimore woman whose husband was British and thought it would be a good memento for her half-British children.”
• In Off Message, Brian Beutler frets that Democrats aren’t pressing their political advantage on the question of Russian political influence in America, as seen by the indictment of an FBI witness who claimed that Biden got bribes from Ukraine: “In a best case scenario, all of the Republicans who abetted the Russian op did so as blind but useful idiots.”

South Carolina. Haley and Trump were closing out their primary campaigns on Friday with dueling rallies across the state. Trump was gathering supporters in Rock Hill, near the North Carolina border, then heading to a convention of Black conservatives in Columbia; Haley was wrapping up her bus tour with an event at the Patriots Point museum outside Charleston, one of the state’s iconic campaign stops, with the decommissioned USS Yorktown as a backdrop. Primary Pivot, the super PAC spending to convince non-Republicans to back Haley, finished its South Carolina push with a radio ad urging Black voters to fight Trump’s “unique threat” to democracy.

New Hampshire. A New Orleans magician fessed up to creating an AI-generated Joe Biden call that urged primary voters to stay home last month, giving the details to NBC News. “I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it.” Paul Carpenter said. “There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.” The call, which NBC News first reported two days before the primary, reached thousands of potential primary voters and imitated the number of a Democratic operative running the successful Biden write-in campaign. The “someone” who the magician says paid him: Steve Kramer, a consultant who worked on ballot access issues for the Dean Phillips campaign (which has since disavowed him and “expressed outrage” over the allegations).

Schiff for Senate, “Big Deal.” First came California Rep. Adam Schiff’s ads attacking Steve Garvey, attempting to boost the Republican U.S. Senate candidate’s name ID in the primary and get him into the two-person general election. Then came Rep. Katie Porter’s ads attacking Schiff over that gambit and going after Eric Early — a ploy to split Republican votes and help her, not Garvey, place second on March 5 and make the general election. Schiff has hit back with a new Garvey ad, citing a Fox News interview with Garvey to warn that he could actually win the seat in November, which Democrats don’t think is possible.

Pervez Agwan, “Fighting for You.” Since mid-October, Pervez Agwan has made his race to unseat Rep. Lizzie Fletcher in the Democratic primary a referendum on U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza. “She’s backed by [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee]], a group that is supporting almost 100 Republican insurrectionists,” Agwan says in his final ad. That’s a tactic ex-Michigan Rep. Andy Levin used in his uphill, and unsuccessful, 2022 re-election campaign.

Sandy Smith for Congress, “Trump Won.” Early voting is underway in North Carolina, and new Republican-drawn maps have reduced the number of competitive districts to one — the 1st congressional district, where most voters aren’t white but have been trending toward the GOP. Smith, who lost the 2022 race for a slightly bluer version of the seat, reintroduces herself by shooting an AR-15, posing in front of a monument to “our Confederate dead,” and appearing at a Trump rally to underscore that she “says Trump won the 2020 election.”

Where can Haley win on Super Tuesday? Vermont looked promising; former Gov. Jim Douglas endorsed her, current Gov. Phil Scott has never supported Trump, and in 2016, John Kasich nearly won the primary. It’s just not 2016 anymore. Trump has consolidated the conservative vote in Vermont, and Haley’s sharper criticism of him has hurt her as surely as it’s hurt in South Carolina. Fifty-eight percent of likely voters say they’d be unhappy if she won the nomination, compared to 29% who say that about Trump. Independents break for Haley by 69 points, but Republicans go for Trump by 59 points, and they make up most of the electorate.

It’s the grand accident of the new Democratic primary calendar: By giving Michigan one of their first contests, party leaders empowered the voters most likely to oppose the Biden administration’s support for Israel. Seventy-four percent of Democrats and 64% of independents back a ceasefire, framed as a way for Israel to “try to negotiate the release of the remaining hostages and provide humanitarian aid in Gaza.” That doesn’t mean that three-quarters of Democrats will vote for “uncommitted” on Tuesday, endorsing the campaign to pressure Biden into changing course; 57% of voters who back a ceasefire also back Biden. But it demonstrates how big this voting bloc could be.

Marquette’s polling, nationally and in Wisconsin, finds a tight race between Biden and Trump and a potentially huge advantage for Haley. The broader context: Voters are fed up with every major government institution. Anger at the DOJ is driven by Republicans, who believe it’s fighting a dirty war with Donald Trump, and anger at the Supreme Court is driven by Democrats, outraged at the 6-3 conservative majority’s decisions since 2021. The rest of the angst is bipartisan.

White House. For a full week, Donald Trump avoided commenting on last week’s Alabama Supreme Court ruling, which determined that frozen embryos had the same legal protections as children.

Nikki Haley endorsed the decision in a Wednesday interview with NBC News, and battled follow-up questions all week. On Wednesday, she told CNN that she agreed that “embryos are babies,” but did not wholly support the ruling; on Thursday, she said in another CNN interview that “we don’t want fertility treatment to shut down, we don’t want them to stop doing IVF treatment, we don’t want them to stop doing artificial insemination.”

Trump avoided the conversation entirely, not discussing it during a Thursday speech to the National Religious Broadcasters International Christian Media Convention in Nashville. “No one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you,” he said. Republicans seen as potential Trump running mates had a tougher time avoiding it. Campaigning for Trump in his home state, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said that he had not “studied the issue, so I’m going to let Nikki Haley continue to go back and forth on that issue.”

On Friday, Haley’s campaign manager Betsy Ankeny held a media call to preview the candidate’s next moves after South Carolina, where the campaign is not predicting a win. “This has never just been about who can win a Republican primary,” she said. “This is about who can win in November.” Haley would criss-cross the country before Super Tuesday, and the campaign was buying “seven figures” worth of TV ads, but Ankeny did not name a state that Haley could win. She did suggest that the campaign would continue past Super Tuesday: “We have plans in place in those key states in March after that.”

Senate. After Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville endorsed his home state court ruling at CPAC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee urged candidates to “clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF.” In short order, Republican candidates in competitive Senate races put out statements rejecting the Alabama ruling, including Arizona’s Kari Lake, Ohio’s Bernie Moreno, Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormick, and Montana’s Tim Sheehy — none of whom have previously held elected office.

Matt Schlapp does not apologize. He’s turned the annual CPAC into a series of global meetings for populists, and turned the flagship D.C. event into a three-day MAGA rally. He’s denied the sexual misconduct claims against him in a Republican staffer’s lawsuit, which convinced some CPAC board members to quit. He’s limited some media outlets’ access to what had been one of the political year’s biggest press events — proudly so. Before CPAC kicked off, he talked to Americana about his strategy, and this is an edited transcript.

Americana: CPAC’s been inviting populists from around the world for years now, but there are even more this year — El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele, Liz Truss, Argentinian President Javier Milei. What’s behind the decision to invite them?

Matt Schlapp: Liz Truss reached out to us and said she was going to be in America and she’d always wanted to go to CPAC. We thought that was great synergy. And we’ve obviously worked very closely with the Bolsonaro family, and have had multiple CPACs in Brazil. I got to meet now-President Milei in Mexico City, and everyone there began to realize that if Milei won, he’d be a very important voice for the whole region. We were honored to extend an invitation, and even more pleased that he agreed to come.

Americana: Where does someone like Alexei Nalvany fit in here, to the populist conservative trend?

Matt Schlapp: It’s a great question. I do know these trends are moving all over the world, but I’m not sure I understand exactly the complicated nature of Russian politics — who represents what and who. The problem with looking at any international affairs is, so many times, the journalism involved is really askew. I’ve come to get my intelligence directly from people on the ground.

Americana: You told Steve Bannon that some media, like The Washington Post and HuffPost, weren’t automatically being credentialed. Which outlets are prevented from covering it as press?

Matt Schlapp: It’s not that they’re not invited. It’s that we give media credentials on a per application basis, and we’re being a little more aggressive and saying no to media outlets who really aren’t media. It’s not that we expect every journalist to agree with us, but there have to be some rules of the road on fairness. If media companies are simply propaganda outlets for the Democratic Party, we’re not interested in calling them journalists. If media outlets spend almost 100% of their time going after prominent conservatives, constantly trying to feed anti-Trump rhetoric, then they’re not journalists.

Journalists are people that look at politicians with a jaundiced view, and they try to report the facts. And if you’re going to report the facts and neatly split America, you would have to write as many stories highlighting the wrongdoing of Democrats as you do Republicans. That’s just not happening with these outlets and, specifically with certain reporters, who just seem to take such glee in not acting like journalists that we should call them on it. And we are.

Americana: There’s a VP straw poll, as there was last year. How much is this conference a showcase for potential Trump VPs?

Matt Schlapp: I kind of view it as our version of “The Apprentice.” They get a chance to go up there, give a speech, and see how the crowd reacts. It’s a poll for one man, and I can’t predict how it’ll come out. I know that we tried hard to get as many of those people as possible to come, and some of them tried to but couldn’t.

Americana: Was Nikki Haley invited to speak?

Matt Schlapp: I tried. We attempted to formally invite her. I could understand a politician saying, look, I’ve really got to be in South Carolina. That’s one reason there’s such an affection for Donald Trump. He didn’t let that stop him from coming to CPAC.

Americana: What’s your take on her decision to keep running?

Matt Schlapp: I just think it’s kind of silly. She seems delusional, and it’s frustrating. Some people believe that we’re wasting time in prosecuting the case against socialist policies by not ending the primary. I have a different view — she’s going to be spending a lot of left wing money, and that’s good for us. But it’s going to be harder and harder for her to get any earned media, because it’s not a serious effort.

Americana: Every year, there’s a discussion about whether CPAC still matters. What’s been the impact of the complaint against you, and the criticism from board members? Does it discourage anyone who might otherwise be there from showing up?

Matt Schlapp: It’s the opposite. You’re going to see a huge CPAC this year. Yes, we’ve had some board disagreements and some board conflicts. I think we’ve navigated those conflicts well, and I’m very proud of the board we put together. It’s the most prestigious and prominent board we’ve ever had. We’ve never been in a healthier financial situation in our 50-year history. People have really responded to how we’re leading, and I think it’s the perfect moment for CPAC to be prospering.

Americana: Does bringing Trump to the conference help you there? As in: Hey, he’s endorsing Matt Schlapp’s CPAC, why not you?

Matt Schlapp: From a friendship perspective, I would just say that for [my wife] Mercy and I, we have found Donald Trump, over the years, to be the polar opposite of the way people in the media like to mischaracterize him. He’s been decent. He’s been steady. He’s been loyal. He demonstrates a lot of leadership traits that I wish other politicians had. He doesn’t cut and run, and we’re not going to do that to him either.

• one day until the South Carolina Republican primary
• four days until the Michigan primary
• 11 days until Super Tuesday
• 31 days until the start of Donald Trump’s trial in New York
• 256 days until the 2024 presidential election