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Former President Donald Trump won overwhelmingly in a straw poll after giving a speech full of lies at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, an annual event that saw shrinking crowds this year as many prominent Republicans declined to attend. .
When reporters asked if Trump would stay in the race if impeached, he replied, “Oh, absolutely, I wouldn’t think about leaving.” He added that “it will probably improve my numbers, but it’s a very bad thing for America. It’s very bad for the country.”
“This is the last battle,” Trump dramatically told a thin crowd. “They know, I know, you know, everyone knows. Here it is. Either they win, or we win, and if they win, we won’t have a country anymore.”
“We have no choice. If we don’t do this, our country will be lost forever,” Trump continued. “People are tired of RINOs and globalists. They want to see America First.”
He added, “We had a Republican Party led by freaks, neo-cons, globalists, open borders zealots and fools. We are not going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove and Jeb Bush.”
On top of these existential and grandiose statements, Trump has spewed many lies. He repeated one of his favorite lies—that he “won the second election” instead of President Joe Biden. He also said that he “finished” building a wall along the US-Mexico border, that the Obama administration only gave Ukraine “blankets,” and that the homicide rate in Manhattan was “like nothing ever seen .”
Trump got 62% of the vote; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not announced his intention to run for the White House, came in second with 20% of the vote. Five percent of the vote went to Perry Johnson, a businessman who announced his White House bid on Thursday and ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan (he was later accused of signing thousands of invalid signatures upon nomination by the state election bureau).
The former president’s straw poll win isn’t much of a surprise, as he’s won the past five CPAC straw polls. At CPAC’s Texas event in August, Trump took 69% of the vote compared to DeSantis’ 24%. Beyond past victories, this particular CPAC win for Trump isn’t too surprising, given that this crowd is known to be particularly pro-Trump.
“This is an audience that supports President Trump,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik (RN.Y). Not only did the event offer plenty of Trump-branded gear for sale, but when he took the stage, Trump was introduced as “the next president of the United States.”
While Trump’s likeness was everywhere at CPAC, DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence—both considered two of Trump’s top rivals in 2024—were nowhere to be found.
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