Trump rallies GOP ahead of midterms: Don't get complacent
President Trump urges CPAC attendees to keep up their enthusiasm for 2018 elections, warns Democrats will repeal tax cuts, appoint liberal judges and take away Second Amendment rights.
President Trump went off script – waaaay off script – Friday as he touted his achievements, cracked jokes and attacked his critics in a wide-ranging speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in convention center packed with hardcore supporters.
The president was in rare form – joking about his "bald spot," reading a poem titled "The Snake" and even calling his own prepared speech "boring" – before vaulting off on a 75-minute stem-winder speech just outside Washington.
"CPAC has always been about big ideas and putting them into action," President Trump began, reading from a teleprompter. But as he read in a monotone, the president suddenly caught his own image on a giant video monitor.
"What a nice picture that is, look at that, I’d love to watch that guy speak, oh God," the president said as he looked at his larger-than-life image, while the audience began cheering. He then turned his back to the crowd – watching himself on the big screen – and pantomimed fixing his hair, primping and pressing the tops and sides.
"Ohhhhh, I try like hell to hide that bald spot, folks, I work hard at it,” he said after turning back to face the crowd. “Doesn't look bad," he said, looking back at himself. "Hey, we’re hanging in, we're hanging in, we're hanging in there, right? Together we are hanging in!”
From there it was all bets off. Trump the teleprompter reader had suddenly morphed into Trump the guy who will say anything that pops into his mind – and the crowd ate it up.
Then for over an hour the president would read a portion of his speech from the teleprompter and blast off on one wild tangent after another before returning to his script. He was not about to do the one thing he just can't stand to do – be boring.
“By the way, you don’t mind if I go off-script a little bit, because, you know it’s sort of boring,” the president said to whoops and cheers from the now-enthralled crowd. “Sort of boring. Got this beautiful speech, everything's wonderful, but it’s a little boring.”
He covered all the bases – saying he was a conservative; boasting about his tax cuts and cutting regulations and making conservative judicial appointments; saying he had the best first year of any president ever. He spiced it all up with endless Trumpisms and the kind of digressions that make him seem like a regular guy just shooting the breeze down at the local bar after a few beers.
Sometimes, the president got carried away, like when he said he'd fulfilled more promises than he has made. But he always returned to the red meat, referring to Hillary Clinton at one point, which brought chants of "Lock her up!" from the crowd. On illegal immigration, he said simply, "they'll sneak in through a window."
At one point early on, a protester rose up and shouted something. Security removed the man as the crowd shouted him down. Trump broke off in mid-sentence and waited for the disturbance to end -- joking with event organizers about how the protester got in.
Then he tossed out another hefty hunk of red meat for the true believers, mocking the "fake news" about how they'll cover the minor interruption.
"For the media, the fake news back there, they took very good care of them, they were very gentle, he was very obnoxious," he said. "But tomorrow the headline will be: 'Protesters Disturb.' One person – doesn't deserve a mention, doesn't deserve a headline."
But the president was serious and intense at times, too. “Why do we protect our airports and banks, but not our schools?” President Trump asked. “When we make schools gun-free zones, it just puts our students in far more danger.”
On the high school shooting in Florida last week that left 17 dead, the president said: “There are not enough tears in the world to express our sorrow. They have suffered beyond anything I have ever witnessed."
But he always went back on the offensive. At another point, President Trump took aim at Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- a mainstream media darling but a reviled figure among many of the CPAC attendees – for voting against ObamaCare repeal. "I don’t want to be controversial, so I won’t mention his name," the president said of McCain.
Too late. Everyone knew who he meant.
As he kept whipping up the crowd, the president whipped himself up, too. Near the end, he had a heavily sweaty upper lip and a shiny nose.
But he wasn't done yet. He asked the crowd if they wanted him to do "The Snake." It’s a poem, sort of a version of the Frog and Scorpion fable from Aesop.
The crowd cheered, so Trump read the poem, with a one word intro: "Immigration." The president read:
On her way to work one morning
Down the path alongside the lake
A tender-hearted woman saw a poor half-hearted frozen snake.
His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew
"Poor thing," she cried, "I'll take you in and I'll take care of you."
"Take me in, oh tender woman, take me in for heaven' sake
Take me in, oh tender woman," sighed the vicious snake.
She wrapped him all cozy in a comforter of silk
And laid him by her fireside with some honey and some milk.
She hurried home from work that night and soon as she arrived
She found that pretty snake she's taken in had been revived.
"Take me in, oh tender woman, take me in for heaven' sake
Take me in, oh tender woman," sighed the vicious snake.
She clutched him to her bosom, "You're so beautiful," she cried
"But if I hadn't brought you in by now surely you would have died."
She stroked his pretty skin and kissed and held him tight
But instead of saying thank you, that snake gave her a vicious bite.
"Take me in, oh tender woman, take me in for heaven' sake
Take in, oh tender woman," sighed the vicious snake.
"I saved you!" cried the woman, "And you've bitten me, heaven's why?
"You know you're bite is poisonous, and now I'm going to die!"
"Oh, shut up silly woman!" said the reptile with a grin.
"You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in!"
"And that's what we're doing with our country, folks," President Trump said. "We're letting people in and it's going to be a lot of trouble, it's only getting worse."
The president, looking like he might never leave the stage, went through his accomplishments again: Jobs up, wages up, unemployment down, economy good, "massive tax cuts."
Finally, he wrapped it all up with a "we're going to make America great again and I will never, ever – ever – let you down."
Then he stepped away from the podium as the first bars of the Rolling Stones' classic "You Can't Always Get What You Want" blared in the ballroom.
But that part was "fake news." The crowd got exactly what it wanted.
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