Is Donald Trump a declining parody or a terrifying threat? Mastio & Lawrence on CPAC 2021

Donald Trump emerged from his luxurious Palm Beach exile to wallow in the warmth of devotees at the Conservative Political Action Conference 170 miles away in Orlando. Is he a spent supernova, or a giant barely submerged land mine that could obliterate the landscape at any time? Either way, we've seen our future. There will be no avoiding him. Deputy Editorial Page Editor David Mastio and Commentary Editor Jill Lawrence consider his Sunday speech, all 90-plus minutes:

David: Trump’s CPAC comeback speech revealed a sad little man, angry at local courts and politicians and disappointed in the federal judges he seated, but who “didn’t have the guts or the courage” to bow to him. Trump tried to carry on as if he hadn’t been impeached after the Capitol was ransacked by a mob, but even the lies seemed faintly ridiculous. “We will win. We’ve been doing a lot of winning,” was the wacko fib he launched his speech with, as if he hadn’t cost Republicans control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. Trump Republicans know that truth.

And even with a golden Trump idol on hand, 45% of CPAC attendees, in the organization’s straw poll, said they’d vote for someone other than the former president in the 2024 Republican primary. That’s a disappointing showing for a man out of the limelight for only a few weeks and way up from 2019, the last time the straw poll was taken, when fewer than 20% were looking for an alternative to Trump.

If he can’t get to 90% support at CPAC, the core of the Trumpian Republican base, he’s going to be weaker nationwide. Maybe Republicans are looking for a new messenger, even if they’ll stick with the redefined platform of Trumpism. That’s the one optimistic takeaway I saw anyway in a crowd happily nodding along to nonsense.

Jill: I had no luck finding any sliver of hope. Trump came out to the strains of Lee Greenwood’s totemic Republican song about being “proud to be an American," and then his whole speech was an attack on America, laced with ad hominem attacks on his enemies, from Joe Biden (cruel, anti-science and not grateful enough to Trump for his COVID shot) to Liz Cheney (“warmonger”), including a callout of every member of Congress who voted to impeach or convict him. That is frightening.

Checking the facts: Trump clings to his election falsehoods at CPAC

Even more frightening was his checklist of voter suppression measures for state legislators — no early voting, “eliminate the insanity of mass ... mail-in voting,” voter ID required, and (cue the outrage) get rid of automatic registration for felons and welfare recipients. Why? Because our election system is worse than a third world nation and, oh yeah, he won, but maybe he didn’t, but he will again. Maybe in 2024.

Fact-checking is a useless exercise for a speech like this one. It was a swollen greatest-hits parade of lies, laughable braggadocio, deliberate double talk, ugly insults, ugly transactionalism and — from the man who tried to overturn an election, incited a deadly riot and is under investigation in many civil and criminal cases — the despicable (from him) claim that "we know that the rule of law is the ultimate safeguard. We affirm that the Constitution means exactly what it says, as written. As written."

Most disastrous first month in history

David: Maybe I am drunk on relief that Trump is no longer in office, but I found a lot to be positive about in the quality of the lies Trump delivered. They were down, way down.

He referred to “Joe Biden’s anti-science school closures,” when every parent who has been awake and home-schooling or hybrid schooling their kids knows who was president when schools closed and when they failed to open this fall. Those are Donald Trump’s school closures, if any president has anything to do with them.

He called Biden’s first month in office the “most disastrous … in modern history.” Please, is that even plausible? It doesn’t take some fact-checking whiz kid to point out that’s not true; it merely takes consciousness, or a look at Biden's approval ratings. If anything, this has been the most boring first month in history. We’re reduced to getting worked up about Neera Tanden’s mean tweets.