FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

President Trump Gives Two-Hour Speech at CPAC, at High Level and with High Irony!

March 2, 2019 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump delivered a thorough-composed overview of the accomplishments of his Presidency, and intentions, in a number of areas at the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference today at National Harbor, Maryland, to a packed house of thousands of his supporters, a full press contingent, and livestream to many meeting halls around the country.

The President went from point to point, with stories and jokes for more than two hours, observing “no empty seats in the house.” At one point he said, he was “totally off script right now,” and stating “this is how I got elected: by going off script,” and recalled his victory in 2016. “We did something that has never happened before, and now we have to verify it in 2020 with an even bigger victory.”

There were many high points. One of the most important, is his reiteration of leaving war zones. “We want to bring our people back; we want to fix out country up—roads, bridges, schools.”

On Syria, the President said, “Probably as of today or tomorrow, we will actually have 100 percent of the caliphate in Syria out, and we will leave a small group, but bring our people home.” This point he hit home very hard.

Trump recounted that he flew to Iraq, and asked a Gen. Raisin’ Cain, whose name he had fun with—referring to Air Force Brig. Gen. Daniel Caine, a deputy commanding general in Iraq—why it took two years to knock off 2, 3, or 4% of the remaining terrorists, and General Caine told him that the U.S. could be finished in a week if we attacked ISIS in a different way, not just hitting them from one base.

Trump described his flight into Iraq, and how he sat up with the pilot, because he likes to be around people who know how to do things. When the pilot ordered all the aircraft lights out, and made the landing approach in the dark for safety—with Trump complaining that you couldn’t see the runway, Trump made the point: “We’ve spent $7 trillion in the Mideast, and we can’t even land a plane with the lights on!”

Trump savaged the Democrats’ “Green New Deal,” based largely on wind power. He mimicked a husband asking his wife, “Darling, is the wind blowing today? I’d like to watch television.”

He told the crowd that after two years of Mueller’s investigation, “no collusion had been found”—pointing to House Intelligence Committee’s new chair, Democrat Adam Schiff and his failed “collusion delusion.” “Robert Mueller never received a vote,” he said, and neither did Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump threw in that he had had “a nasty confrontation with Mueller a number of years ago.” Trump also said that as of yesterday, there is a “Schiffy shift” going on in House Intelligence, when “Russia” is no longer the issue, but instead Trump’s finances, and anything else.

On his firing of former FBI head James Comey, which Democrats protested, Trump recounted that a year before, all the Democrats, like John Podesta, had insisted on Comey’s resignation. Trump dramatized the irony: “I told Melania: I’m going to do something today—fire Comey. We will be popular...”

He used the same “I told Melania...” irony device, to great effect, more than once.

On trade, Trump said, we are renegotiating “horrible trade deals, and standing up for American workers. Now, with companies coming in, we need workers but they must come legally, and with merit. We’re building the wall...” Trump pointed to $800 billion lost in trade last year.

“Right now we have people in Congress who hate our country.”

Trump attacked Federal Reserve Chairman William Powell, saying “America is booming,” but the Fed Chair likes “quantitative tightening.” He “likes raising interest rates. We want a strong dollar, but not so strong that it is prohibitive for other nations to deal with us.”

On the Democrats, Trump said, “We’re winning, and they’re not.... We will verify it in 2020; we need an even bigger victory.” He said, “I was a conservative; experts said 2016 election would be close. I got 304 electoral votes; Hillary got 227. I think we’ll do even better in 2020.... We are reversing decades of failure.”

Trump spoke of his negotiations with China, “I dusted off the old tariff law,” and then spoke about the great tariff debates of 1888: President McKinley said others cannot come into our country and steal the wealth. Today we are reversing decades of blunders.

“I got elected by being off script.”

Trump brought a youth on stage, who had been beaten up for promoting conservative ideas on campus, and Trump announced that strict penalties would be drafted for use against those who would suppress political ideas by violence.

Trump said that the U.S. must defend its borders; he referred to crime and murder on the border, giving statistics of crimes by illegal aliens and said illegal immigration must be stopped, and that is why he declared a national emergency.