Trump spreads election lies and claims ‘innocent Republicans’ prosecuted in CPAC speech

Ex-president headlines weekend-long conference indulging in baseless election claims and culture war grievances

Donald Trump appears the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas on 11 July. (Getty Images)

In his headlining remarks at the nation’s largest Republican conference, Donald Trump revived his baseless narrative that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” against him, a running theme across a weekend-long conference strategising for control of local governments and Congress as GOP lawmakers launch a nationwide voter suppression campaign.

The former president took the stage on the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas on 11 July, hours after appearing on Fox News to air his baseless conspiracy theory and downplay his supporters’ attack on the US Capitol, fuelled by his election lies.

“We were doing so well until the rigged election came along,” Mr Trump said at CPAC.

The conference, once a high-profile stage to glimpse the state of the contemporary GOP, has become a clearinghouse for online-drive conspiracy theories, self-righteous delusions, and culture war grievances.

It also has attracted far-right militia, violent reactionaries and QAnon proponents, coalescing around their perceived persecution and “cancellation” from Democratic elected officials, conspiring with social media companies to “censor” them. (This year’s theme: “America Uncanceled”.)

In a straw poll, attendees ranked as their biggest priorities “voter ID and election integrity” after Republican lawmakers in nearly every state filed dozens of restrictive voting bills under the guise of protective “voter confidence” undermined by Mr Trump’s own rhetoric, which called the outcome of the 2020 election a “hoax” before a single ballot was cast – arguments that sent a pro-Trump mob to violently attack the Capitol on 6 January.

Panels at CPAC included “Detecting Threats to Election Integrity: How to Collect Evidence of Fraud” and “Spare the Fraud, Spoil the Child: The Future of American Elections.”

“There’s so much evidence,” Mr Trump said, without presenting any. “There’s bad things going on in this country. ... It’s a disgrace to our nation, and we are truly being scorned and disrespected all over the world.”

After his company and its chief financial officer were indicted on a range of criminal charges following a years-long investigation for tax fraud, the former president told the CPAC crowd that “innocent Republicans are being prosecuted”.

“They’re in search of a crime,” he said of New York prosecutors. “This is lawless and tyrannical behaviour. A political persecution that is straight out of the communist countries you see around the world.”

Panelists and speakers at CPAC repeatedly heaped blame for Republican “persecution” on “the left” – from its “antisemitism” to its “destruction of history and holiness.” One panel was titled “Tyranny Without Talking: The Left’s Efforts to Destroy America.”

Though the conference removed white nationalist Nick Fuentes from the event, speakers across the weekend relied on the same rhetoric that has spread across the far right and has been embraced in more mainstream arenas.

Speakers invoked the “great replacement” myth, conspiracy theories tied to George Soros and homophobic attacks on marriage equality, hurled abuse at transgender women and girls, and spread dangerously false claims about US history, particularly slavery, to illustrate a fraudulent vision of the state of the nation.

The results of CPAC straw poll for a 2024 presidential candidate placed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with 68 per cent of the vote – if Mr Trump chooses not to run.

In that case, Mr Trump received 70 per cent.

“If it’s bad, I say it’s fake,” Mr Trump said of polling. “If it’s good, I say, ‘That’s the most accurate poll perhaps ever.’”

In his CPAC remarks, he also touted his administration’s moves to accelerate development of life-saving Covid-19 vaccines – a position at odds with panelists and GOP lawmakers spreading disinformation about vaccination efforts and the public health crisis.

In his interview with Fox News on Sunday, Mr Trump said he gets “no credit” for the vaccines, and he has previously urged his supporters to get them. He has called them “safe” and responsible for “saving the world.”

But some of his most vocal allies in Congress, including US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had previously praised the former president for helping develop them, have spread false claims about inoculation efforts.

Ms Greene and US Rep Lauren Boebert also compared vaccine outreach efforts to Nazism.