He claimed that even Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the lone Republican to vote to impeach Mr. Trump on one article, abuse of power, had split the baby. “Even him, I got half a vote,” he said. “He couldn’t do it all. He wanted to get nice free publicity for himself.”
Mr. Trump also falsely characterized the 2017 tax cut as the “largest” in history (several others outrank it), and claimed that he had eliminated the estate tax. In reality, the 2017 law increased the threshold but the tax still exists.
Mr. Trump has been a regular speaker at CPAC for years, and has credited the organization for giving him a platform long before he officially declared his run for president. In 2015, however, when he was still a New York businessman, the crowd booed him when he proposed fighting ISIS with troops on the ground in the Middle East.
But for the past four years, he has been the main attraction and headliner of the conference, which has been molded in his image. Last year, Mr. Trump delivered the longest speech of his presidency from the CPAC stage, clocking in at two hours five minutes. (That year, he opened, rather than closed, with a flag hug.)
In an election year, his address was more in line with the staple speeches he has been giving at campaign rallies, and it set no records for length.
But he appeared particularly awed by his own abilities to keep the spotlight on himself.
“I can get elected twice over the wall, can you believe this,” he told the crowd, while claiming, falsely, that Mexico was paying for the construction of a wall along the southern border.
“Yes they are, they are paying for it,” he said, adding, without explaining himself, “oh, they’re going to die when I put in what I’m going to do.”