Donald Trump emerged from political exile Saturday to blast President Joe Biden and NATO over the Ukraine crisis and repeated his false claims of a stolen 2020 election in a speech to grassroots Republicans.
Speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, the former president spent 86 minutes repeating many of his favorite applause lines, faulting the “radical left” and its “witch hunt” against him.
As massive explosions lit up the sky over Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Trump blamed Russia’s invasion of its neighbor on Biden’s “weakness” and lavished praise on President Vladimir Putin’s intellect.
“As everyone understands, this horrific disaster would never have happened if our election was not rigged,” he said, to rapt applause.
NATO, he said, was “looking the opposite of smart” for hitting Russia with sanctions rather than resolving to “blow (Russia) to pieces — at least psychologically.”
“The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course he’s smart,” he went on. “But the real problem is that our leaders are so dumb.
After a year largely out of the public eye, Trump’s ecstatic reception left little doubt that the Republican Party remains in thrall to the twice-impeached, single-term president. There were chants of “four more years” from the sea of supporters in red “Make America Great Again” hats, who clapped on cue as Trump railed against “woke tyranny” and “cancel culture.”
The crowd reserved their largest cheers for the 75-year-old headliner’s dismissal of Democrats’ claims to be the party of democracy as “bullshit” — and for his claim that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg “used to come to the White House and kiss my ass.”
There were nods to a possible 2024 run — “we did it twice and we’ll do it again,” he claimed, falsely recasting his 2020 defeat to Biden as a victory — although he left the crowd guessing about whether he will personally challenge Biden to a rematch.