Editor’s note: Vickie Shufton has been writing occasional pieces for The Edge over the last few months. With this article we welcome her as a regular weekly columnist. Her I WITNESS column will appear every Saturday.
Two weeks ago, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convened their annual political clambake. Honored speakers in this year’s lineup included insurrection-defending Senators Rick Scott, Ted Cruz, and J.D. Vance; Congressional conspiracy theorists Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Lauren Bobert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene; Arizona election-denier Kari Lake; recently-ousted Brazilian strongman Jair Bolsonaro; and a heapin’ helpin’ of assorted neo-Nazis and fascists—including convicted grifter Steve Bannon, who identified Fox News, absurdly, as an enemy of the Republican party. I lost count of the number of times that the now-ubiquitous “death to wokeness” trope was deployed—always a real crowd-pleaser.
If this isn’t must-see TV, I don’t know what is.
Of course, the star attractions were Donald Trump and his progeny. Donald Jr. and his sidekick Kimberly Guilfoyle gleefully pranced across the stage hawking all kinds of MAGA-merch, leading to momentary confusion about whether this viewer had inadvertently tuned in to the Home Shopping Network. As far as I can tell, none of them have ever missed an opportunity to monetize their unique brand of faux-patriotism.
Curiously, Milania Trump was nowhere to be seen in connection with this dystopian jamboree. Ivanka Trump was also MIA, having finally realized, perhaps, that her father is … icky.
Of course, the main event was Trump himself. Predictably, he rolled out his greatest hits of grievances, self-aggrandizing falsehoods, and criticisms of every person in his orbit who ever demonstrated the faintest whiff of allegiance to the Constitution. Somehow, he failed to mention his recent call for the Constitution to be terminated altogether. It must have slipped his mind, but stay tuned for him to get to work on that as soon as he is able to occupy the Oval Office again.
Instead of yielding to temptation and reporting my jaundiced version of Trump’s remarks, I think it more useful to simply provide verbatim excerpts of his remarks copied directly from his campaign website. Here are some of them, having been pruned by his staff of the mind-numbing repetitions that typify his speaking style (the capital letters are his, not mine):
“Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that WE are the ONLY ONES who can stop THEM. They know that we CAN defeat them. They know that we WILL defeat them. But they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after YOU—and I’m just standing in their way …
”In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today I add: I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution! …
“With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, we will throw off the political class that hates our country, we will beat the Democrats, we will rout the fake news media, we will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOS, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels ONCE AND FOR ALL …
“When we started on this journey, a journey like there has never been before, we had a Republican Party that was ruled by freaks, neo-cons, globalists, and open border zealots, and fools. But we are NEVER going back to the Party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush…..We are never going back to a country ruled by entrenched political dynasties in both parties, rotten special interests, China-loving politicians, and a militant left-wing news media that’s either frightened of telling the truth or is truly evil and bad—you never know which. We are not going back to this—Not now, not EVER …
“Under my leadership, we will use all necessary state, local, federal, and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American History …
“Continuing the work of the 1776 Commission, we will teach OUR values and promote OUR history and OUR traditions to our children.”
These quotes, while exhausting, are not in any way meant to be exhaustive; space considerations for this column, along with galloping nausea, prevent me from printing every quote from the campaign website. Anyone interested in seeing all of that material should feel free to visit the website themselves. And while there, be sure to make a campaign donation and buy a hat.
I am aware that many readers are mortally offended by my liberal rants. Several of you are very vocal about your low opinion of what you perceive to be my misguided views of contemporary politics and culture. That’s okay—the nice thing about America, at least for the time being, is that all of us are at liberty to air our views without fear of “retribution.”
I will decline to comment further on Mr. Trump’s remarks. I am confident that they will feel inspiring and “just right” to any number of readers, and that an equal number will feel completely repulsed. I know one thing that is indisputably true: We have all seen this movie before. Some of us would prefer never to watch it again, and some of us would be happy to see it rerun, without intermission, forever.
Clearly, we will all be compelled to watch the movie at least one more time. How many more reruns we will have to watch in the future is not yet clear. For now, I am going make some popcorn, pour myself a glass of Maalox, and wait for the lights to dim.
