Trump previews 2024 Biden attacks in rambling 90-minute CPAC speech that veered from menace to slapstick

Former president Donald Trump previewed his attacks against President Joe Biden in the 2024 election when he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday afternoon in a meandering speech that toggled between mocking his opponent and telling rambling anecdotes.

Mr Trump made the address at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center on the day of the South Carolina primary, where he is expected to overwhelmingly defeat the state’s former governor Nikki Haley.

The twice-impeached-four-times indicted former president served as the main attraction for the 50th annual gathering of conservatives where he made his political debut in 2011. The conference’s executives – married couple Matt and Mercedes Schlapp – have effectively turned into a celebration of Mr Trump above all else.

Mr Trump showed up almost an hour late to the conference and delivered a 90-minute speech wherein he veered between offering his plans for political retribution and a crackdown on immigrants on one hand and mocking Mr Biden and the media on the other.

Seemingly aware of the fact the press would criticise his penchant for long-winded stories – including darting between his interactions with the Mexican government, to his visiting Iraq – he looked to swat them down. “They’ll say, ‘he rambled,’ nobody can ramble like this,” he said. “They’ll say ‘he rambled. He’s cognitively impaired.’ Not it’s really the opposite. It’s total genius.

“You know that it is these fakers up there, ‘he rambled on endlessly, telling these horrible and very boring stories’ – no, they’re very informative stories, they’re very important stories actually. And no, there is no cognitive problem – if there was I’d know about it.”

All the while, he