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CPAC 2017: Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pence and Steve Bannon speak – live
CPAC 2017 live: Steve Bannon says Trump 'maniacally focused' on keeping promises
(35 minutes later)
7.14pm GMT
19:14
Priebus says Bannon is extremely consistent and very loyal to Trump’s agenda. He is a presence that is very important to have in the White House. He says he cherishes his friendship.
Bannon says “I can run a little hot” sometimes. Priebus is “steady”, he says. His job is one of the toughest in the White House.
Schlapp says “the best thing we can do is to let these two guys get back to work”. They walk off to a brief standing ovation.
7.11pm GMT
19:11
“If you think they are going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken,” says Bannon. “Every day it’s going to be a fight.”
Schlapp asks whether the Trump movement can combine with existing conservative movements.
We have to, says Priebus.
We’re a nation with an economy and a culture and a reason for being, Bannon says. That is what unites us.
Trump and Pence are coming to CPAC to show his appreciation.
“We’re at the top of the first inning with this,” he says. “It’s going to take just as much fight and determination.” He says “we want you to have our back”.
And he tells the crowd to “hold us accountable for delivering on what we promised”.
7.07pm GMT
19:07
Schlapp asks what the media keeps getting wrong about “the Trump phenomenon” and will it change.
Priebus says he hopes it will change. He says he became “conditioned” during the election to hearing about why Trump won’t succeed, despite the polling getting “better and better and better”.
He says people he knew kept telling him “Trump! Trump! Trump!”, which leads the crowd to start a brief chant. “Tomorrow,” Priebus promises them.
The country was hungry for something far bigger than one story and one issue, and it was President Trump that was the answer.
Bannon says he disagrees with Priebus. He says the media coverage will not improve, because the “corporatist, globalist media” are “adamantly opposed to Trump’s economic nationalist agenda”.
Every day, he says, Trump tells him he is going to stick to the issues he ran on.
7.03pm GMT
19:03
“The mainstream media better understand something – all those promises are going to be implemented,” Bannon says.
Updated
at 7.03pm GMT
7.02pm GMT
19:02
Bannon says Trump is the best rally speaker since populist Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.
6.59pm GMT
18:59
Bannon says they could not outspend Hillary Clinton but the rallies and the speeches led to his victory.
He says Trump is “maniacally focused” on keeping his campaign promises.
6.57pm GMT
18:57
Bannon says the way the “opposition party” (meaning the media) has portrayed the campaign and the White House is “always wrong”.
He says you saw the media “all crying and weeping that night” after the election.
Trump had the energy and vision to galvanise the coalition of the right, Bannon says.
Trump and his team never had a doubt he would win, he says.
Priebus says Trump laid out his vision four or five years ago at CPAC and it has not changed.
“We were starving for somebody real, somebody genuine,” Priebus says. He claims Trump has “put in the best cabinet in the history of cabinets”.
Trump hits his agenda every day, he says.
“He’s even leaving bathrooms alone,” says Schlapp. “That’s refreshing for people.”
“It’s a states issue,” says Priebus.
6.54pm GMT
18:54
What is the biggest misconception about the Trump White House?
Priebus says the biggest misconception about the two of them is “everything that you’re reading”. They share an office suite and they spend all day together, he says.
When the party is together “similar to Steve and I”, it can’t be stopped, he says.
Trump brought this party and this movement together, says Priebus.
6.52pm GMT
18:52
Moderator Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union starts by “thanking these two guys for what they’ve been doing”. Priebus, dressed in a dark suit and striped tie, thanks the crowd for voting for Trump. Bannon thanks CPAC for inviting him at last. Schlapp says they decided to invite everybody this year. It’s very chummy.
Updated
at 6.52pm GMT
6.50pm GMT
18:50
Next up are Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist and former Breitbart boss, and Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff. The relationship between the upstart firebrand who the Democrats have called a white supremacist and the establishment former RNC chair in many ways symbolises the struggle for control of Trump’s agenda, and the way the two interact on stage will be fascinating to watch.
6.50pm GMT
18:50
The interview ends with McEnany telling her: “This nation is so blessed to have you as secretary of education and President Trump could not have made a better choice.”
6.42pm GMT
18:42
DeVos is now being interviewed. She is asked about Trump’s decision on the transgender guidelines, which interviewer Kayleigh McEnany defines as Trump hitting back at overreach by Barack Obama.
DeVos says of the statement she put out following Trump’s move: “The statement spoke for itself to a large extent,” and picks up McEnany’s point: “This issue was a very huge example of Obama overreach,” she says, saying the former president had a “top-down approach to issues better solved at a local level’.
She adds: “It’s our job to protect students and to do that to the fullest extent that we can.”
6.37pm GMT
6.37pm GMT
18:37
18:37
She says the education system is failing American children, attacking “the education establishment” rather than “good public school teachers”.
She says the education system is failing American children, attacking “the education establishment” rather than “good public school teachers”.
“Do you believe parents should be able to choose the best school for their child regardless of their zip code or family income?” she asks. Her prepared remarks contain the audience’s response:
(YES!)
Luckily for her the audience plays ball, allowing her to deliver her next line: “Me too. And so does President Trump.”
Turning to higher education, she says “the faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think. They say that if you voted for Donald Trump, you’re a threat to the university community. But the real threat is silencing the first amendment rights of people with whom you disagree.”
Turning to higher education, she says “the faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think. They say that if you voted for Donald Trump, you’re a threat to the university community. But the real threat is silencing the first amendment rights of people with whom you disagree.”
6.34pm GMT
18:34
DeVos is given a standing ovation as she takes the stage. One woman shouts: “I love you!” She gets a big round of applause for claiming she is “perhaps the first person to tell Bernie Sanders to his face that there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.
6.31pm GMT
18:31
Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, is up next. She is reported to have opposed Trump’s decision to rescind protections allowing transgender students to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.
She released a statement on Wednesday night casting Trump’s move as returning decision-making on the issue to state and local level and saying: “I have dedicated my career to advocating for and fighting on behalf of students, and as secretary of education, I consider protecting all students, including LGBTQ students, not only a key priority for the department, but for every school in America.”
Her pre-released remarks suggest she will avoid this issue today, and instead hit back at the media, which criticised her for a disastrous Senate confirmation hearing that suggested she had a poor knowledge of the workings of her department. Most Democrats agreed, as well as two Republican senators, with the result that Mike Pence had to cast the first vice-presidential tie break vote for a cabinet nominee in history in order to get her confirmed.
6.18pm GMT
18:18
A discussion about why young Americans seemed so interested in socialism - “FREE stuff vs FREE-dom: Millenials’ Love Affair with Bernie Sanders?” - could perhaps have done with hearing from a young American who was interested in socialism.
As it was, Mercedes Schlapp of the Washington Times, Representative Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Dolin of the ACU Foundation and Ana Quintana of the Heritage Foundation all asked each other why millennials could not see that socialism was a danger to themselves and the country, and it turned out none of them really knew the answer.
Only DeSantis briefly showed some insight into the people they were discussing, noting that young people in the US had never seen a booming American economy and suggesting that when they left college and found it hard to get a job they might not view capitalism as the world’s greatest economic system.
6.03pm GMT
18:03
David Smith
Tensions at CPAC were clear earlier as Dan Schneider, leader of the American Conservative Union, denounced the alt-right, the rebranding of the far right that has been accused of racism, Islamophobia and neo-Nazism.
“There is a sinister organization that is trying to worm its way into our ranks and we must not be duped,” Schneider told the audience. “Just a few years ago, this hate-filled leftwing fascist group hijacked the very term ‘alt-right’.
“That term, alt-right — it had been used for a long time in a very good and normal way, but this group has hijacked it. We must not allow them to be normalised. They are not part of us.”
Schneider added: “They are antisemites. They are racist. They are sexist. They hate the constitution. They hate free markets. They hate pluralism. They hate everything and despite everything we believe in.”
A short distance away, outside the main hall, prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer, wearing a general admission badge, told reporters that he “coined the term” alt-right and rejected Schneider’s criticism.
“He didn’t even do basic research on what the alt-right is and he denounced it,” Spencer complained.
“That’s pretty pathetic. If I was to give a speech denouncing Marx, I would be reading for months. He just called us names.”
Asked if he feels he now has an ally in the White House, Spencer said: “In terms of Donald Trump, I would say that it’s not so much that he’s alt-right, it’s that he’s a nationalist and a populist and so he’s connected to us on that basic level. He doesn’t articulate our ideas – he’s not an identarian – but his arrow points in our direction.”
The 38-year-old also praised Trump aides Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller but added: “I don’t have Trump on the phone every morning. It’s not anything like that. ‘Allies’ may be a little too strong a word.”
He said of the Trump administration so far: “The implementation has not been perfect but it’s certainly very high energy and I appreciate that.”
Spencer denied that he is a fascist or antisemite or had ever met the Ku Klux Klan but expressed opposition to interracial marriage and refused to take sides regarding the second world war. Challenged about a “Hail Trump” salute he gave last November, he said, using the German version of the first word: “‘Heil Trump!’ a moment of exuberance. It was an ironical statement.”
Spencer estimated he had been to CPAC seven times but now felt “less welcome”. He explained: “The fact they’re denouncing us in rather dumb ways on the main stage, that’s something new. There’s an old adage that is first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win, and I think we’re in the fighting stage. Hopefully it won’t be actually physical, it’ll just be with words.”
As Spencer talked to a large group of reporters, a delegate who gave his name as “Grizzly Joe”, wearing a stars and stripes shirt, confronted him angrily: “Fuck you, you don’t represent us. Get the fuck out of here. You don’t represent us. You’re a piece of shit. I hope everybody got that. You’re a fucking piece of shit. He’s a fucking white supremacist piece of shit.”
Spencer was reportedly escorted out by security soon after.
5.59pm GMT
17:59
Oliver Laughland
Earlier Ted Cruz claimed border agents had told him illegal crossings of the border had decreased by 50% since the election but that the mainstream media will not report it.
There is no data available to support this claim – in fact, the available statistics suggest the opposite.
The latest figures from Customs and Border Protection cover the period between October and December 2016 - the first fiscal quarter of 2017. They show the total number of migrants apprehended by Border Patrol was 136,670 people. This is significantly higher than the same period last year, when 102,588 people were apprehended.
If we compare December 2016 (the only complete month available since the election) - with December 2015, we also see that the total number of apprehensions has increased by 6,259 people.
It seems Cruz might want to double check his maths, especially if he wants to rid himself of the moniker Trump once gave him: “Lyin’ Ted”.
5.05pm GMT
17:05
Wayne LaPierre of the NRA has released a new video hyping his speech here tomorrow and identifying his pro-gun organisation as Trump’s “most powerful ally”. “Already the forces that conspired to keep Donald Trump out of the White House are coming together to sabotage his administration,” Pierre says, over dystopian footage of violent protests, flag-burning, and Madonna saying she thought about blowing up the White House.
5.04pm GMT
17:04
In a Trumpish touch, Cruz claims border agents have told him illegal crossings of the border have decreased by 50% since the election but that the mainstream media won’t report it. We’ll come back to that figure.
4.55pm GMT
16:55
Asked about impeachment, Cruz says the Democrats are living in “an alternative universe”.
He claims to have been in an elevator with a liberal Democrat “who was just standing there in a complete stupor ... and that hasn’t changed!”
“They’re all like that,” responds his interviewer Mark Levin of the Conservative Review.
Ted Cruz at #cpac2017 pic.twitter.com/9Ud3dZ8pBp
Cruz says there is a word for their base.
“Moscow?” suggests Levin (which seems a bit rich).
Cruz says he was going for “bat-crap crazy”.
He says the Democrats have taken the lesson from the election that Hillary Clinton was not leftwing enough. The audience laughs. He says they are heading towards the Sanders/Warren wing of the party.
Cruz says that Democrats are going to oppose everything but Republicans must not allow them to block the business of government (also a bit rich).
He thanks former Senate majority leader Harry Reid for changing congressional rules to make it harder to block nominees and therefore indirectly allowing Trump to elect a very conservative cabinet.
Levin says CPAC should get behind Keith Ellison (who backed Bernie Sanders last year) as the next DNC chair. The crowd seem to like that idea.
4.42pm GMT
16:42
Ted Cruz is now on stage discussing the constitution. The Texas senator and former opponent of Donald Trump is attacking the court rulings that have blocked Trump’s travel ban, and a recent decision that ruled that the second amendment does not guarantee Americans the right to own “assault weapons”, which he calls “nuts”.
4.38pm GMT
16:38
White nationalist leader Richard Spencer, who shouted “Hail, Trump! Hail, our people! Hail, victory!” at a meeting in December, has just been escorted out of CPAC by security, according to the Huffington Post’s Igor Bobic. He was the centre of a scrum of media for half an hour or so outside the convention hall beforehand. He has seen his rebranding of the far right – the “alt right” – move closer to the heart of power with the election of Donald Trump and elevation of Steve Bannon, whose Breitbart news website was an unofficial home for the political strand, which has been accused of racism, Islamophobia and neo-Nazism.
Richard Spencer being escorted out by security at CPAC pic.twitter.com/nShgyWLUUc
