Source: Politics<\/p>\n
When Donald Trump boarded Air Force One and said goodbye to Washington on Jan. 20, 2021, he was considered a political pariah. The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol cast doubt that he could ever show his face in D.C. again, let alone entertain running for president.<\/p>\n
Flash forward to July 2022, and the former president is not only still the most popular figure in the GOP but got a hero\u2019s welcome before a friendly audience in his first return to the nation\u2019s capital. Trump spoke at the America First Policy Institute\u2019s first annual summit on Tuesday, just a handful of city blocks from the site of the insurrection that defined his presidency. He showed no remorse \u2014 but exhibited all the tell-tale signs of a man eager to run for president again in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ran the first time and I won. Then I ran a second time and I did much better. We got millions and millions more votes,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe may just have to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump was met with a standing ovation in a ballroom packed with Republican lawmakers, former cabinet officials, administration officials, donors and supporters, before delivering an address that focused on crime and his plans for public safety. He veered into controversy over transgender athletes, immigration and China, and he outlined a proposal to create tent towns on the outskirts of major U.S. cities where the government would relocate the nation\u2019s homeless.<\/p>\n
But Trump became most animated when talking about the thing even some allies wish he would drop \u2014 his false claims of a \u201cstolen\u201d election, which incited the events of Jan. 6. He promised that the House committee investigating his actions that day would not put a damper on him or the political movement represented by many in the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey really want to damage me so I can no longer go back to work for you, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to happen,\u201d Trump said of the Jan. 6 committee\u2019s work. He was met with a standing ovation from the room. \u201cIf I stayed at home and just took it easy, the persecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately. It would stop. But that\u2019s not what I will do.\u201d<\/p>\n
That declaration \u2014 by an former president whose own party\u2019s congressional leaders denounced him just 18 months ago \u2014 was met with chants of \u201cfour more years!\u201d<\/p>\n
The two-day summit, which concluded with Trump\u2019s speech, was a kind of reunion for the \u201cAmerica First\u201d set working to advance the Trump administration\u2019s agenda post-White House. But it wasn\u2019t just a homecoming. It was a test run for what kind of reception a Trump revival tour could receive in D.C. proper.<\/p>\n
Yet his speech wasn\u2019t the only big event in town featuring a prominent Trump-era figure.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence \u2014 who was not on AFPI\u2019s agenda \u2014 spoke at the conservative Young America’s Foundation. It created a split screen moment for the two key figures from Jan. 6, as Washington is still reckoning with the deadly day.<\/p>\n
For those gathered at the Marriott Marquis to hear Trump speak, the Trump-Pence rivalry was met with a shrug, and Jan. 6 was either a \u201cpolitical witch hunt\u201d or a mere afterthought.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how deep that rift goes \u2014 I think Pence missed his opportunity for greatness and trustworthiness for me,\u201d said Gregg Seymour, a pastor from Las Vegas who flew in for the two-day event. \u201cDo I think people should have stormed the Capitol? Absolutely not. But I think a lot more has been made out of it than the burning of different cities. Nobody talks about how that was a tragedy,\u201d said Amber Colville, a physician from Mississippi who came to hear discussions on health care and Trump\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n
Instead, attendees were hopeful Trump might soon announce another run, though many said they were eager to hear him outline a more forward-looking vision, something Trump\u2019s close allies have urged him to do, too. In his speech, Trump painted a picture of America in decay, describing in gruesome detail crimes in cities across the country. He called for hiring more police officers, bringing back controversial \u201cstop and frisk\u201d policies and giving drug dealers the death penalty. He also called for Congress to pass a \u201clandmark package on public health, public safety and mental health reforms,\u201d and said the federal government should protect the right to self defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need an all out effort to defeat crime in America and strongly defeat it and be tough and be nasty and be mean if we have to,\u201d said Trump.<\/p>\n
In his own Washington speech on Tuesday, Pence maintained, as he has before, that he \u201ccouldn\u2019t be more proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
But when asked about what \u201cseems to be a divide\u201d between him and Trump during a question-and-answer session, Pence cast the former president as a politician who may be focused on the past, an implicit rebuke of his preoccupation with the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that the president and I differ on issues, but we may differ on focus,\u201d Pence said. \u201cI truly do believe that elections are about the future, and that it\u2019s absolutely essential \u2014 at a time when so many Americans are hurting, so many families are struggling \u2014 that we don\u2019t give way to the temptation to look back. But I think the time has come for us to offer a bold, positive agenda to bring America back. And I\u2019ll continue to carry that message all across this nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s on this ground that Pence has cautiously been drawing a contrast with Trump. On Tuesday, he cast the midterm elections as a historic clash between \u201cunified conservative action\u201d and the \u201caggressive liberalism\u201d of the left.<\/p>\n
Pence is running far behind Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in early 2024 primary polls \u2014 viewed by some traditionalist Republicans as an unpalatable appendage of Trump, yet by many Trump hard-liners as disloyal for his resistance to Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
Pence, despite saying previously that \u201cthere\u2019s almost no idea more un-American than the notion\u201d that he could have overturned the election, has largely been reluctant to address questions about Jan 6. Still, two of his top White House aides have recently testified to a federal grand jury investigating matters tied to the riot at the Capitol.<\/p>\n
But retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as Pence\u2019s national security adviser and now works at AFPI, called talk of a giant rift between Pence and Trump \u201coverblown.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWashington is a political town, you have to expect it. It is what it is,\u201d Kellogg said.<\/p>\n
Marc Lotter, the communications director for AFPI who also worked for Pence, believed both men were actually presenting a similar policy vision. \u201cThey\u2019re talking about America First policies in their own voice and their own manners, but they’re talking about the same thing, rebuilding the success we had in the Trump-Pence administration and pushing it forward,\u201d Lotter said.<\/p>\n
With Trump\u2019s return, a familiar circus came back as well. Outside the Marriott, protesters shouted and waved flags calling Trump \u201cfascist.\u201d Following the speech, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) taunted them from the hotel\u2019s driveway.<\/p>\n
The ballroom was packed with lawmakers like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), former top Trump administration officials like Larry Kudlow and Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon, and Trump\u2019s former White House aides and campaign staff. Also in the audience were Republican VIPs like RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, top Trump aides like Stephen Miller and others now working with AFPI, like Kellyanne Conway and Brooke Rollins.<\/p>\n
On the sidelines, aides reminisced about their time in the White House. Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is running for governor in Arkansas, soberly recounted an overnight Christmas trip to Iraq to visit soldiers and joked about her warm welcome with the conservative crowd here in D.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s pretty exciting to be in Washington and actually have people cheer for you when you get behind a podium,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n
Eric Ueland, who served as Trump\u2019s legislative affairs director in the White House, said the summit at times felt like a White House reunion.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to see people and share war stories \u2014 but also now try to figure out OK, where are we going next?\u201d Ueland said.<\/p>\n
David Siders contributed to this report<\/p>\n