OXON HILL, Md.–With an eye towards the 2018 midterm elections, President Donald Trump took the stage Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference to deliver a speech full of red meat for his conservative base, addressing issues ranging from gun rights to tax cuts to immigration.
Just two years after CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp disinvited Trump from the conference amid doubts of his conservative beliefs and credentials, this year’s crowd–at a convention center just outside of Washington — greeted the president with thunderous applause and a standing ovation.
Trump on midterms
Trump urged the crowd to keep that “same drive” for the mid-term congressional and gubernatorial elections, and warned that off-year elections often go against the party in power because of “complacent” voter attitudes.
“I’ve finally figured it out. What happens is you fight so hard to win the presidency, you fight, fight, fight … and now you’ve got to go and fight again, but you just won,” Trump said. “Nobody has that same drive, so you end up not doing that well because the other side is crazed.”
Trump on guns
After a school shooting in South Florida that left 17 students and faculty dead last week sparked a nationwide debate over gun control, Trump repeated his highly controversial proposal to arm some teachers and school staff members in order to protect students.
If a teacher had been carrying a concealed firearm in Florida when the shooter arrived, “the teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened,” Trump said.
Trump said that he didn’t want to arm every teacher, but that arming “gun-adept teachers and coaches” who make up “10, maybe 20 percent” of a school’s staff would be enough. He ridiculed the policy of many local school systems to designate school gun-free zones, arguing that they were ineffective and would only create more risk.
Echoing the calls of the National Rifle Association to arm highly trained teachers to fortify schools –rather than to impose tough new anti-gun measures – Trump insisted “This would be a major deterrent, because these people [the shooters] are inherently cowards.”
“If they thought like if this guy thought that other people would be shooting bullets back at him, he wouldn’t have gone to that school,” Trump said to the cheering crowd. “He wouldn’t have gone there. It is a gun free zone.”
At the start of his speech, Trump asked the audience of conservative activists and public figures to choose between the Second Amendment right to bear arms or the Republican tax cut passed late last year, if they could “only choose one.”
Despite the crowd overwhelmingly voting for the Second Amendment, Trump said he and other lawmakers would vow to “act and do something,” to make schools safer, including possibly beefing up background checks and raising the minimum age for buying rifles from 18 to 21.
“We really do have to strengthen up, really strengthen up background checks,” Trump said. “We have to be very strong on that.”
The pro-gun crowd lightly applauded Trump’s remarks on gun control.
Trump on immigration
Trump renewed his call for tough action against illegal immigrants in this country and building a wall along the southern border with Mexico to keep others out, in response to chants from the crowd to “build that wall!”
“Don’t worry, you’re getting the wall,” Trump said to much applause, despite numerous hurdles the president faces on Capitol Hill in obtaining $25 billion to tighten border security and begin building the wall.
Trump rebutted claims that the wall was just a campaign promise and said that every time someone says that, “the wall becomes 10 feet higher.”
But Trump said the wall alone was “not enough”, and that it would have to be paired with additional border security measures and immigration reform to protect Americans.
Trump said he wanted to reform immigration by replacing the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which grants permanent residence status to randomly selected individuals from countries with low levels of immigration to the US, with a merit-based system.
“I want people coming into this country based on merit,” Trump said. “I want people who have skills, who can support themselves financially, who can contribute to our economy, who will love our people and who will share our values, who will love our country.”
Trump’s immigration comments came just several weeks before the March 5 deadline in which the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields approximately 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who arrived to the country as children from deportation, will expire. Trump said that the Democrats’ unwillingness to consider his proposals for border security meant that it would be their fault if DACA expires.
“The Democrats are being totally unresponsive. They don’t want to do anything about DACA,” he said.
Trump on the economy
Trump repeatedly lauded the growth of the stock market and the economy under his presidency, attributing much of it to the sweeping tax reform bill he passed last fall.
“We passed the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country,” Trump bragged, although many experts and fact checkers have disputed that claim.
He also pointed to “record low” levels of unemployment as evidence of the country’s “blazing” economy, citing the 2.7 million jobs the American economy has added during his presidency.
“African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded, and Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history,” he said.