Trump Leans Into 2024 Race During Bitter CPAC Speech: ‘I Am Your Retribution’

“In 2016 I declared ‘I am your voice,’ today I add, ‘I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who’ve been wronged or betrayed, I am your retribution,'” said former President Donald Trump during his CPAC speech on Sunday.

CPAC, the annual political convention organized by the American Conservative Union (ACU), is where America’s leading conservative voices gather to give speeches, take straw polls and rally support for Republican campaigns.

Trump first spoke at CPAC in 2011 and has been a frequent guest ever since.

In his speech, Trump made a return to much of his 2016 anti-establishment rhetoric, claiming “we are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove and Jeb Bush.”

“Our enemies are lunatics and maniacs and cannot stand that they do not own me, I don’t need them… I don’t need their money,” he said. “People are tired of RINOs and globalists.”

In an apparent attempt to separate himself from other Republicans, Trump doubled down on support for entitlement programs.

“We are never going back to the people that want to destroy our great Social Security system,” Trump said. “Even some in our own party, I wonder who that might be.”

The former president did not offer an explanation of why many of his policies, while he was president, were similar to other Republican presidents, with lots of industry deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy.

Trump also leaned into the Ukraine War debate, with his main thesis being that Biden started the war by pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and convincing Russia that the United States was weak.

“I had the personality type that kept us out of wars,” he added. Negotiating a peace deal for the “disastrous” war, Trump claimed, will take “no longer than one day.”

Attempting to dispel accusations that he was weak on Russia during his presidency, Trump bragged about the anti-tank weapons he sent to Ukraine that Obama refused to send. Trump claimed that all Obama sent after the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, were “blankets and pillows.”

In a change of heart since the 2020 presidential election, Trump said that Republican voters should “beat the Democrats at their own game… That means swamping the left with mail-in votes, early votes and Election Day votes.”

Trump announced his 2024 campaign in November, following his party’s disappointing showing in the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans underperformed in both houses of Congress, and many conservatives blamed the former president and his false “rigged election” rhetoric for the losses.

Trump’s only official competitors at the moment are his former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and “anti-woke” businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely seen as Trump’s largest threat, has signaled that he may soon announce his candidacy.

Watch the full speech here: