Washington’s three-day MAGAfest is basking in the glow of Donald Trump’s second inauguration as president.
But even as the Trumpworld elite take a victory lap in the shadow of liberal Washington D.C., the conference is grappling with fractures within the party that now controls the House, Senate and Executive Branch.
Thursday marked a triumphant return for the many far-right influencers who took to the conference stage. The feeling was so jubilant that Steve Bannon, War Room podcast host and former White House strategist, felt comfortable flashing what appeared to be the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute that has delighted actual racists and eternally-online edgelords since Elon Musk performed a similar gesture at an event marking Trump’s inauguration.
In the hallways, gawkers also stopped to take photos with recently freed January 6 rioters welcomed to the conference, including Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the Proud Boys, who was arrested yet again Friday.
Mike Lindell and other hardcore Trump loyalists worked the crowds, which were thinner than the two past years’ events leading up to MAGA’s retaking of power.
Capping it off, Musk himself appeared, giving a bizarre interview to close out the first night, wearing gaudy sunglasses, a gold chain, and wielding a bejeweled chainsaw. The X/DOGE chief crudely quipped: “I am become meme!” to a crowd that chuckled quietly. At the same time, on his own social media platform, the mother of one of his several children with various baby-mamas publicly pleaded with him to pay attention to his son’s “medical crisis.”
But it wasn’t all smiles.
Jake Lang, a January 6 participant charged with and jailed for assaulting police on the day of the attack, was denied entry to the conference — despite, according to Lang, paying for a booth on the convention floor. Other January 6ers, including Tarrio and Richard Barnett, also said they were initially denied entry to the conference.
The controversy grew so loud on right-wing social media platforms that CPAC was forced to issue a statement contradicting reports that convention officials had blocked attendance to all J6ers. Tarrio’s denial was reversed; it wasn’t clear how many others were blocked, then welcomed.
Lang, however, posted another dramatic scene from the convention on Friday. Clipped from his livestream, the video depicts Lang furiously confronting a convention security official about the decision to keep him out. At another point, an equally furious CPAC chair Matt Schlapp rants on camera about the rioter-turned-influencer’s public postings about the feud.
A day earlier, video of Lang being escorted out of the building, had gone up on Barnett’s account, infuriating their shared followers.
“I’m still not allowed […] inside CPAC by the way,” Lang insisted on Friday.
Tarrio, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for seditious conspiracy linked to the Capitol violence (then pardoned by Donald Trump), did not appear to have further issues with convention security. That didn’t stop him from being arrested. The bust ironically occurred when he and others, including Lang, returned to the scene of the crime at the Capitol, and the former Proud Boys icon was detained for several hours by Capitol Police after he allegedly swatted a phone out of a protester’s hand.
Meanwhile, Bannon’s Nazi-ish salute was causing problems one floor up. Far-right Jordan Bardella, leader of the French political party National Rally, canceled his Friday speech at CPAC, telling reporters Bannon had made “a provocation, a gesture referring to Nazi ideology.”
He wasn’t the only one to pass on the opportunity.
Aside from Jim Banks, until very recently a Trump-happy member of the House, the conference was almost entirely devoid of guests from the upper chamber of Congress. Speaker Mike Johnson made a brief appearance onstage Thursday, but even House members were not in obvious abundance this year.
Despite unified right-wing control of the government, CPAC makes it evident that uncomfortable rifts remain — within the GOP and the broader American (and global) conservative movement.
And the glitz of Trumpworld can only paper over so much.
