Dallas CPAC, Day One: Speakers Pay Homage To Trump And Bash Biden

DALLAS, TX —You can't love Tex-Mex without recognizing that every dish is essentially the a recombination of the same ingredients: rice, beans, meat, cheese, tortillas and salsa.

That would also be true of the first day of CPAC 2021: "America Uncanceled," as it's being advertised.

All the ingredients are all just as familiar. Critical race theory teaches hatred. Cancel culture is destroying Judeo-Christian American values. Donald Trump is a national treasure, and COVID was overblown and absolutely came out of a lab in Wuhan, China.

The day began with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick telling the crowd that the current crisis at the border is all part of a plan.

"What's happening on the border today is not an accident," Patrick explained. "It's purposeful. It's a designed plan. Why are they (Democrats) letting millions of people pour across this border? Because they want to turn them into citizens, turn them into voters and take over this country."

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While this would come as news to most Democrats, it did rile up the room. And Patrick drew first blood to let the attendees know that Texas stands first on the battlements to prevent America from being overrun by aliens, not unlike the 1996 Will Smith action flick Independence Day.

"If we fall," Patrick intoned, "America falls."

From there, Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue delivered brief comments on religious liberty, Virginia Congressman Ben Clein decried cancel culture (even as a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was removed overnight from Charlottesville near the site of the white nationalist march four years ago) and North Carolina Rep. (and alt-right darling) Madison Cawthorn turned up the heat.

"I've gotten to travel across the country a good bit now, trying to win my generation back from the clutches of socialism," Cawthorn told the hushed crowd. "It's no longer Republican versus Democrat. It is now freedom-loving patriots versus people who worship at the altar of the state. "

By the time Donald Trump Jr. strode onto the stage, there wasn't a combination of Democrats are un-American, the media lies, liberals want your guns, and religious freedom is under assault that hadn't been paraded before the hall.

It was an all-you-can-eat buffet of grievances, half-truths and pretzel logic that the audience gleefully gorged on.

The ex-president's son shifted the narrative to the cult of personality that has kept his father at the head of the Republican Party despite being voted out of office. Trump Jr. began by proclaiming that his father was right about . . . everything. He promoted the notion (with no proof, but is gaining steam as a speculation) that the COVID virus either escaped from a lab or was deliberately released, and that President Biden is suffering from dementia and is rewarded by his staff when he gets his words out correctly with ice cream cones.

And, when it comes to protecting America's interests abroad, Trump Jr. asserted that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is "thrilled to be negotiating against a dolt."

Day two is now underway.

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