Are We Supposed to Laugh at CPAC, or Be Scared of It? Or Both?

We will find out soon.

I don’t understand how any reasonable person could look at the human-type organisms who were at CPAC last week and think those people should be in charge of a Chuck E. Cheese’s, let alone the country. There was a guy there pretending to be JFK Jr, who died in an extremely well-documented plane crash nearly 24 years ago, and it’s possible he was one of the more normal people there.

Every report you read about CPAC makes it sound depressing, lame and, most of all, nearly empty. Politico reported that “Donald Trump Jr. and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene addressed nearly empty rooms,” and the talk at all the afterparties was how this was the most pointless, poorly attended CPAC ever. Most of the major potential Presidential candidates skipped the event all together, and the ones who did show up were mostly booed for not being Donald Trump. (That linked story calls CPAC “shrunken” in the headline, by the way.) A friend who has covered several CPACs called it “prom for lonely psychopaths.” It sounds like the last place in the world any sane person would want to be.

See, these stories seem to say, the only people left in this movement are losers. These stories are meant to be reassuring: The insanity of the Trump years have passed, and these are the only weirdos who didn’t get the memo that the party’s over.

And I would love that to be the case. But then again: Donald Trump still might become President again.

I think this is something, in the coverage of CPAC, that got a little lost. These people are the most loyal of Trump loyalists, willing to travel to a rainy, dreary Washington DC in early March to hear the MyPillow guy spray spittle at them. There aren’t many of them left anymore. Everyone else has moved on to do something else with their lives.

But you know what this means? It means that if Trump wins the 2024 election — and we really need to start facing the very real possibility that he might — these people will be rewarded. They don’t think they’re the only losers still around. They think they’re the only true believers.

And … they might be right? If you were to ask me who will be the President in February 25, my guess right now would be “someone other than Donald Trump” — the correct bet is to always go with The Field. But if you were to ask me to name the five people most likely to be President then, Trump is obviously — obviously — one of the five. He’s clearly one of the most likely three. He might be one of the top two. Pretending otherwise is kidding yourself.

There are many things to be terrified of if Trump becomes President again. (This New York Times story, about how his second term would be almost entirely about retribution, is just the start of it.) But what we saw at CPAC last week is one of the biggest one. Those people are completely insane. When I’m feeling empathetic, I feel awful for how far afield from reality they have become; when I’m feeling less so, I think they have brain worms. But they’re also making a bet: If Trump becomes President, they, the most loyal of all the loyalists, will be in charge. They’re closer to being right than any of us want to admit. It’s easy to laugh at them now— nearly impossible not to, all told. But they see our laughter. I suspect, if it comes down to it, they will remember it. You can’t take this people seriously. But you may have to anyway.

Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of six books, including the Edgar-nominated novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books, and the upcoming The Time Has Come, released on May 16, 2023. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.