SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, is underway just outside of Washington, D.C. This year's event comes one month into President Trump's return to office, a return that has seen a dizzying array of executive actions and efforts to reshape the federal government. NPR's Stephen Fowler joins us from CPAC, where Trump is set to speak tomorrow. Hi, Stephen.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: Set the scene for us.
FOWLER: So I stepped out into the lobby of this massive hotel conference center on my way outside the convention main hall past a media row. There's attendees milling about. I saw conservative podcasters and streamers polling audience members to talk about Trump's latest actions. There's an exhibition hall where people are advocating for conservative causes around health care, selling January 6-related merchandise.
Yesterday opened up with a conversation with Vice President JD Vance defending recent remarks he made at a conference in Munich, and he shared his views on masculinity. But so far, the biggest reaction and the undercurrent of CPAC has been Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump adviser tasked with overseeing the DOGE effort that's implementing Trump's vision to shrink spending, scope and size of the federal government. He spoke Thursday.
DETROW: I mean, Musk has been the overwhelming storyline of the Trump administration so far. What did he say at CPAC, and how has the DOGE effort been received by the crowd?
FOWLER: He came out like a rock star. He had sunglasses on, a dark, gothic MAGA hat, as he described it. He was handed a golden chainsaw from the president of Argentina as a nod to cutting bureaucracy. He was treated like a rock star in one of his interviews that he did with a conservative TV host and by the attendees that gave him some of the biggest applause out of anyone I've seen here so far.
So many other speakers, Scott, also nodded to DOGE and its mentality of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, taking it to the deep state, including conservative speakers from other countries that say that he's a model. I guess I wouldn't say that DOGE is the new MAGA, per se, but it's the latest version of this populist, antiestablishment brand of conservatism that only a few people can wield but plenty are on board with.
DETROW: And President Trump is going to speak during the final day of the conference tomorrow. He has often made a lot of headlines with CPAC speeches. What should we expect to hear from him?
FOWLER: Well, pretty much everything that's happened at CPAC this week is a preview of Trump 2.0. I mean, I was struck by comments from Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, who said Trump has already accomplished so many things - rooting out that massive waste, fraud and abuse, crippling the deep state. He mentioned the largest-ever deportation effort in American history.
And so many of the Cabinet secretaries have also been here, speaking about different parts of Trump's agenda and how it fits in with what they're doing and the successes. We had the attorney general, the energy secretary, the housing and urban development secretary. It's also a peak example of how almost everything in the GOP and the conservative arena right now has just been subsumed into Trumpism. And, Scott, it's only been a month, and many of Trump's actions have been held up by the courts or will take time to implement, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Trump's speech here be treated like the opening of a victory lap.
DETROW: Yeah. That is NPR's Stephen Fowler speaking to us from CPAC in National Harbor, Maryland. Thanks a lot.
FOWLER: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
