Aaron Rupar covered the TPUSA conference last weekend and it was worse than I thought. I had seen the infamous Matt Gaetz clip, which was repulsive. It turns out they were all repulsive:
Minutes later, Cruz’s Tampa audience erupted after he proclaimed, “I’m Ted Cruz and my pronoun is kiss my ass.” It quickly became clear to me that the summit would serve as a useful window into the state of US conservatism in 2022. Suffice it to say it remains very, very ugly.
Before the Friday portion had ended, Ron DeSantis decried “woke math” and Marjorie Taylor Greene goaded the crowd into a loud “lock him up!” chant directed at Hunter Biden. Saturday brought a manic Donald Trump Jr. pushing bonkers conspiracy theories about Covid. That was downright normal, however, compared to Lauren Boebert, who raised far more questions than she answered when she asserted during her speech that “contrary to popular belief, I have never been an escort for Senator Ted Cruz.”
The entire TPUSA was a festival of owning the libs. To the extent that policy even came up, it consisted of things like slagging Ukraine, defending the MAGA coup attempt, and portraying the climate crisis as a hoax.
Trump’s headlining speech was rambling and featured long stretches where his audience — which was pumped up throughout the weekend by pro wrestling pyrotechnics and frat boy-style crudeness — sat in silence.
Notable passages including Trump absurdly claiming he actually finished the border wall and announcing that at one point in his presidency he told NATO countries he wouldn’t come to their defense if they were attacked by Russia. He pushed the big lie by arguing vote totals from nursing homes must’ve been falsified because residents of them are too busy dying to vote.
It really does sound as though people are getting sick of his whining about 2020. He should realize that he’s made his point. They all believe it was stolen. But his obsession with the details is boring.
Here are some of the clips. I won’t post Gaetz’s juvenile insults again. I’ll post this one instead, from this morning: