

The officials wanted Border Patrol to bus asylum seekers to San Antonio, he claimed. “You know, the mayor of Washington has really picked a beef with you over the fact that there’s an invasion going on in Washington, D.C., because you sent 5,000 illegals,” the CPAC chairman told Abbott.Ībbott said he’d visited South Texas and found that local officials said their communities were “completely overrun” with migrants. Bowser had criticized him for busing migrants to D.C. Newsom had recently taken out ads blasting Abbott in Texas papers. That day, Abbott was still neck deep in a public squabble with California Gov. Save America.” Abbott, who will face off with Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke in November, ticked off a list of campaign talking points: migration constitutes an “invasion,” property taxes need to be cut, parents ought to control what their children are taught in schools. On the screen behind them was this year’s theme: “Fire Pelosi.

He spoke on a panel with CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes.
#National anthem cpac movie
“The land of the free under siege from an enemy within,” an ominous voice narrates over images of Black Lives Matter rallies.Īfter the prayer, the national anthem, the pledge of allegiance, Owens’ performance and the movie trailer, first up on the mainstage was Texas Gov. At a dizzying pace, the trailer flashed between clips of protests turned rowdy, American flags aflame, Confederate statues being toppled, Republican politicians lamenting the supposed Marxist threat and at one point, a brief clip of an elderly Fidel Castro. When Owens wrapped up, the room darkened, and a trailer for a CPAC film titled The Culture Killers: The Woke Wars appeared on the screens. The highlight was a track titled “America First,” words she claimed had led to Trump’s “crucifixion.” Wearing a large red, white and blue dress that read “Mobilizing Patriotism,” an ad for a Christian mobile telephone company, she launched into her set. Singer Natasha Owens then took the stage.

He warned of “the haughty forces of darkness who wish to enslave us with their manufactured fears and experimental morality.” Behind the rabbi, a giant video screen read in bright letters, “Awake, Not Woke.” When the day’s events kicked off early Thursday afternoon, a rabbi who’d traveled from Israel led a bizarre prayer in which he asked God to rid us of “Biblical illiteracy,” “Godlessness” and “moral relativism.” The attendees stood with their hands folded across their paunches, their heads bowed in prayer. To Cal Jillson, a professor at Southern Methodist University and an expert on Texas politics, CPAC’s decision to hold its conference in Dallas a second year in a row is “unusual.” Still, he said, “They find Texas to be particularly comfortable, ideologically and in partisan terms. To hear CPAC organizers tell it, they picked Dallas because it’s in Texas, a state they apparently view as one of the last bastions of freedom in a country beleaguered by progressives. Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, even took a break from demonizing refugees and migrants in his country and made the 5,600-mile trip to demonize refugees and migrants in Dallas. Former President Donald Trump came again. That’s “your cage,” she’ll tell you.ĬPAC first came to town in 2021, not long after another rightwing conference, the QAnon-linked “For God & Country Patriot Roundup.” Like the 2021 gathering, this year’s event included conservative speakers from across the country and beyond. You’ll ask where the press section is, and a volunteer will point to a cordoned area in the back of the main ballroom. You’ll pass vendors hawking QAnon ball caps and shirts emblazoned with President Joe Biden’s face with a Hitler-like mustache atop his lip. Entering the Conservative Political Action Conference’s event at the Hilton Anatole hotel in Dallas, you’ll walk past one sign after another mentioning the word “freedom.” You’ll pass right-wing booths – “Read Epoch Times, Defeat Communism,” says a poster at the ultra-conservative newspaper’s table.
