Without Trump, the US's biggest conservative festival falls flat [View all]
The music was loud. Giant screens played Donald Trump’s greatest hits on repeat, promising to end forever wars and put America first.
There was just one problem: as loyal foot soldiers of the Trump movement gathered for its biggest annual jamboree in Texas, the president, leading a war in Iran, was nowhere to be seen.
How different from 12 months ago at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC): Mr Trump had triumphantly returned to the White House, Elon Musk wielded a giant chainsaw as a metaphor for slashing government spending and JD Vance, the vice-president, turned his barrels on Europe.
This year, under the giant glass dome of the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Centre, the energy was gone. There was no cabinet lieutenant dispatched to warm up the crowd. No heavyweight ally with the authority to unite the base ahead of a difficult midterm election.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/without-trump-us-biggest-conservative-102942944.html
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