A conservative columnist who was booed at the Conservative Political Action Conference after criticizing conservatives for being “hypocrites” regarding women’s issues defended her comments Sunday and said there is “nothing more freeing than telling the truth.”
Mona Charen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a writer for National Review, spoke out during a panel Saturday about conservatives’ willingness to accept President Trump and Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore despite multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.
She also criticized CPAC for inviting Marion Marechal-Le Pen, the niece of National Front leader Marine Le Pen, saying it was a “disgrace” she was invited to speak.
Charen’s comments Saturday drew loud boos from the crowd, and she was later spotted leaving the event with multiple guards, who she said “seemed genuinely concerned” for her safety.
“I’ve been dreading it for days, but when it came, I almost welcomed it,” Charen wrote of her appearance in an op-ed for the New York Times. “There is nothing more freeing than telling the truth. And it must be done, again and again, by those of us who refuse to be absorbed into this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism, by those of us who refuse to overlook the fools, frauds and fascists attempting to glide along in his slipstream into respectability.”
Charen, who previously worked for President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan, as well as New York Rep. Jack Kemp, reflected on the annual gathering, and said it was once a “natural fit.” But of late, Charen said CPAC, like the GOP, has “become heavily Trumpified.”
“What happened to me at CPAC is a perfect illustration of the collective experience of a whole swatch of conservatives since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee,” she wrote. “We built and organized this party — but now we’re made to feel like interlopers.”
Charen said she was surprised she was asked by event organizers to speak at the annual gathering given her views on the president, Moore, and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and considered declining the invitation, as she expected the audience would be “hostile.’
“But too many of us have given up the fight,” she said. “We’ve let disgust and dismay lead us to withdraw while bad actors take control of the direction of our movement. I know how encouraged I feel whenever someone simply states the truth, and so I decided to accept CPAC’s invitation.”
Charen said she “spoke to a hostile audience for the sake of every person who has watched this spectacle of mendacity in disbelief and misery for the past two years.”
“Just hearing the words you know are true can serve as a ballast, steadying your mind when so much seems unreal,” she wrote. “For traditional conservatives, the past two years have felt like a Twilight Zone episode. Politicians, activists and intellectuals have succumbed with numbing regularity, betraying every principle they once claimed to uphold.”
But Charen said she was encouraged by the dissenters, including some at CPAC, who have continued to stand for traditional conservative principles.
During the panel Saturday, Charen was asked about hypocrisy from feminists.
“I’m actually going to twist this around a bit and say that I’m disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extra-marital affairs, who brag about mistreating women,” she said.
Charen also criticized the GOP for standing ready to endorse Moore even though multiple women accused him of pursuing romantic and sexual relations with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.
“You cannot claim that you stand for women, and put up with that,” Charen said.
