Expect the worst from Trump loyalists at CPAC and in South Carolina this week

On Saturday, former president Donald Trump will attend the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside of Washington, DC right before he hops over to the South Carolina primary, where he will almost certainly declare victory.

His address to the conservative faithful at CPAC — largely comprising snake oil salesmen, College Republican chapters looking for a fun weekend in DC, and the most dieheard conservative activists out there — will serve as a sort of homecoming.

Trump first addressed the conference in 2011. Doing so began his tease of running for the 2012 Republican nomination, during which he promoted the racist conspiracy theories that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and that he somehow did not deserve to have graduated from Columbia University or Harvard. Trump ultimately elected not to run that year, but his CPAC appearance marked a turning point. The reality television host from New York who spent much of his adult life as a Democrat would become the standard bearer of the Republican Party just five years later, in 2016.

In 2021, Trump gave his first major speech after leaving the White House — and, more notably, after January 6 riot — at CPAC, in his adopted home state of Florida. The fact that the gathered attendees welcomed him so resoundingly showed the party would stick with him rather than purge him and move on.

Indeed, Trump will be the dominant theme at this year’s CPAC. Former officials in his administration such as Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Ben Carson will speak, as well more Trumpish elected officials such as Senators JD Vance of Ohio and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. MAGA acolytes such as failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and also-ran presidential