February 23, 2018

Trump Accuses Opponents of “Atrocities” in CPAC Speech

And conservatives are still chanting “lock her up.”

President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.Ron Sachs/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On Friday morning, President Donald Trump delivered an often-improvised speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference that ran about 30 minutes longer than scheduled. Trump told the crowd that he believes his administration has had the best first year of any presidency in US history.

Following the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that left 17 people dead, Trump asked the crowd whether they’d prefer to keep the tax cuts Republicans passed last year or the Second Amendment rights that he said Democrats would eliminate. After gun rights received far more applause, Trump said, “I’m gonna leave it at the Second Amendment. I don’t want to get into that battle.”

Trump also attacked the “crooked media,” adding that “we had a crooked candidate, too.” Attendees responded by chanting, “Lock her up.” Trump followed up to say, “Boy, have they committed a lot of atrocities.” He did not specify which atrocities he was talking about.

It was not the only old battle Trump returned to. The president also went after his frequent adversary Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for voting against an Obamacare repeal bill last year.

After attacking an armed sheriff’s deputy who took cover outside during the Parkland shooting, Trump called for arming teachers with concealed weapons. “The beauty is it’s concealed—nobody would ever see it,” Trump said before adding that a “teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened.” 

Trump accused Democrats of abandoning Dreamers—young undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children. In September, Trump moved to end protections from deportation for nearly 700,000 Dreamers. Earlier this month, Democrats overwhelmingly voted to fund Trump’s border wall in exchange for providing a path to citizenship for more than a million Dreamers. The proposal failed after the White House demanded steep cuts to legal immigration along with the wall.

Trump also read the lyrics of “The Snake” to warn Americans about what he sees as the dangers of immigration. The song describes a woman who takes in a snake that gives her a “vicious bite” instead of “saying thanks.” The “reptile” tells her “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.” After reading the line, Trump threw up his arms and said, “That’s what we’re doing with our country, folks.” He reportedly received a standing ovation.

Trump’s speech was billed as a chance to unveil new North Korea sanctions. But he only briefly mentioned the country at the end of his more than hour-long speech. As Trump left the stage, the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” played in the background.

Watch the full speech here:

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate