Trump administration officials plan to turn out in full force for the Conservative Political Action Conference this week as President Trump continues to elevate the event that launched his political career seven years ago.
Trump himself will return to the CPAC stage on Friday, a day after Vice President Mike Pence kicks off the festivities with a speech there Thursday morning. In all, 13 administration officials will speak during the three-day conference, a demonstration of the White House’s regard for the annual gathering of conservative activists.
“Matt Schlapp and CPAC are getting ready for another exciting event,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday, referring to the chairman of the American Conservative Union, the group responsible for hosting CPAC. “Big difference from those days when President Obama held the White House. You’ve come a long way Matt!”
The administration’s CPAC presence is set to include appearances from at least eight Cabinet-level officials and three White House aides, in addition to the marquee speeches by Trump and Pence.
Donald McGahn, Trump’s White House counsel, is slated to deliver rare public remarks on Thursday, and Andrew Bremberg, who also maintains a relatively low public profile, will appear on a panel about “what it takes to rise above circumstances” later that afternoon, according to the official CPAC schedule.
Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s highly visible White House counselor, will appear for a discussion alongside Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon on Friday, and budget director Mick Mulvaney will take one of the event’s final speaking slots on Saturday afternoon.
In announcing his intention to attend CPAC earlier this month, Trump noted that his “journey to #MAGA” — a reference to his signature campaign pledge to “Make America Great Again” — began in 2011 at the conservative conference. Many observers credit the speech Trump delivered seven years ago at CPAC with jumpstarting his foray into politics.
Trump vowed during his speech at the event last year, roughly a month after his inauguration, that he would return again and again to the conference he said he loved.
“You know, my first major speech was at CPAC,” Trump said in his 2017 remarks. “And it was — I loved it. I love the people. I love the commotion.”
The Trump administration managed a similar show of support for the confab last year, sending 11 aides and officials to the National Harbor, Md., hotel where the event takes place, according to the 2017 CPAC schedule.
A number of the White House officials who graced the stage last year no longer work in the West Wing.
Former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former chief strategist Steve Bannon appeared together at CPAC in 2017 for a discussion many observers interpreted as an attempt to refute the rumors of feuding between the two that had surrounded the White House since its earliest days. Neither survived past the fall. Two other Trump aides — Sebastian Gorka and KT McFarland — have also left the administration since they represented the president’s agenda at CPAC last year.
The planned speeches from Trump administration officials will likely dominate news coverage of the conservative conference, which will also feature a handful of congressional Republicans and GOP media personalities.
However, the president has recently flirted with a set of proposals that the typical CPAC audience would likely oppose. Trump’s recent embrace of a two-year deal that would lift the spending caps conservatives once fought to implement, his proposal of a budget that would send deficits soaring and his support for an immigration plan that would effectively offer amnesty to 1.8 million undocumented immigrants have given some conservatives reason to remember their original skepticism of the businessman who became the GOP’s standard-bearer.
But the warm welcome Trump received at CPAC last year demonstrated the extent to which he has tested the limits of conservatism in his few years on the political stage. And the president is likely to experience a similarly enthusiastic reception when he enters the ballroom at the Gaylord Hotel on Friday for the second CPAC speech of his presidency.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the strategy behind dispatching so many officials to CPAC.
