ORLANDO, Florida — Donald Trump Jr. closed the annual Conservative Political Action Conference with a mocking takedown of President Joe Biden during an extemporaneous address that channeled his father in every aspect but one: He never mentioned the 2020 election.
On the heels of the keynote speech of this year’s CPAC, in which former President Donald Trump made multiple unsupported claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump Jr. on Sunday afternoon focused on energizing conservatives for the 2022 contests to come. The former president’s eldest son urged participation in every race up and down the ballot, saying too much is at stake in the midterm elections for them to sit on their hands.
“We need each and every one of you to be in the game, 100%,” Trump Jr. told a crowd of roughly 1,000 activists who gathered in a hotel ballroom for the final speech of this year’s conference. “We need to be engaged; we need to be involved; we need to be all-in, in every race.”
“I’m not talking about just Senate, or gubernatorial races — or the House,” Trump Jr. added. “We need to be involved down to our school boards so we can prevent the radical Left from pushing and teaching institutionalized racism to our children.”
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With President Joe Biden’s approval rating stuck near 40% and historical trends that boost the party out of power in the White House in midterm elections, the Republicans are positioned to win congressional majorities in November.
And, as he did the previous two election cycles, Trump Jr., 44, who is occasionally mentioned as a future political contender, is lending a hand. The 45th president’s eldest son is popular on the campaign trail, and over the past six years, he has turned into a top GOP surrogate — in demand as a headliner for fundraisers and grassroots events. But Trump Jr.’s remarks at CPAC were laced with much more than a 2022 call to arms.
Over the course of just under 20 minutes, Trump Jr.:
Ridiculed Biden’s mental and physical acuity; referred to the president’s son, Hunter Biden, as a criminal and a drug addict; accused the “fake news” national press corps of ignoring the administration’s missteps (and misdeeds); discussed findings of a federal investigation alleging Trump might have been spied on by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign; and referred to the Republican Party’s political opposition, presumably the Democratic politicians and liberal activists, as “the enemy.”
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“The enemy — the other side, and at this point, looking at the things that they are pushing, you’ve got to use that word,” Trump Jr. said.
Trump Jr. briefly touched on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, arguing that strongman Vladimir Putin decided to attack his Eastern European neighbor after concluding Biden was weak and would not do anything to stop him. Reflecting the views of many mainstream Republicans, Trump Jr. said Putin acted after watching the botched U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and said the war would have been prevented if his father was still president.
“The first thing a bully does, a bully like Vladimir Putin: He takes advantage of the weak, infirm. And no one is weaker and no one is more infirm than Joe Biden,” Trump Jr. said. “All you have to do is watch him walk up a flight of stairs. But it’s worse than that … What I’ve seen is not leadership.”
