Eric Trump touted the progress made in the first year of his father President Trump’s administration to cut down regulations in a wide-ranging discussion Thursday evening at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside of Washington, D.C.
“The floodgates are opening,” Trump, a businessman himself, said in a conversation on the main stage with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. “The regulation has decreased, and we can actually do things again, and that’s because of pro-business, pro-American ideas.”
Regulation under the Trump administration has indeed been dramatically reduced. A study by the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank shows that finalized federal rules are at their lowest point since 2005, and that the Trump administration has saved billions in regulatory rollback.
Trump and Kirk also discussed the 2016 campaign and criticized the media’s coverage of his father both during and after the election, but did not discuss perhaps the most talked about topic of the day, gun control, following the recent school shooting in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed.
Broward County, where Parkland is located, was brought up, however, in the context of the 2016 campaign.
“I saw more ‘Hillary for Prison’ signs in many of these places than ‘Clinton for President’ signs,” Trump said.
The two didn’t hesitate to go after the media, a popular line of attack for every major speaker at the conference.
“Media of this country does not understand the tone of this country,” Trump said while criticizing the coverage of the 2016 campaign.
Trump and Kirk also discussed the current political climate on college campuses, making the case that conservatives on campus are treated unfairly.
“It’s very difficult to be a conservative in America today,” Kirk said. “It’s difficult to be a Trump supporter; it’s especially difficult to be a Trump supporting conservative on a college campus … It’s almost dangerous.”
Trump agreed. “We’re going to be attacked. We’re all going to be attacked,” Trump said while calling for conservatives to fight back.
The first family and Kirk have been close since the beginning of the 2016 election cycle.
“Charlie is one of these guys that came into our life very, very early in the campaign, and he is amazing. He is beyond his years; he has built an organization like no one else,” Trump said at the beginning of the discussion.
