CPAC 2024 – live: Trump claims he is ‘proud political dissident’ in speech as South Carolina primary underway

Gustaf Kilander has the story:

“I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident,” Donald Trump said in his keynote speech on Saturday. “I am a dissident.”

“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,” the former president posted on Truth Social earlier this week. “It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”

An hour later than scheduled, Mr Trump has started his CPAC keynote speech.

Donald Trump claimed Black voters like him because of his many indictments and mug shot during a speech at the Black Conservative Foundation gala on Friday evening.

“I got indicted for nothing. They were doing it because it’s election interference. And then I got indicted a second time, a third time and a fourth time,” Mr Trump said. “And a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against. And they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing.”

The former president is currently facing 91 charges across several cases against him. Mr Trump gave the speech in South Carolina just hours before polls opened for the state’s presidential primary.

“The mug shot, we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population,” he said later in the speech. “It’s incredible. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know?”

Mr Trump was scheduled to speak at CPAC 2024 at 1 pm local time — now, at 1:30 pm, the former president has yet to take the stage.

Watch The Independent’s live feed of his keynote speech here:

Watch as Mr Trump is scheduled to take the stage at the conference any minute, delivering the keynote address as votes roll in from the South Carolina primary:

The continued presence of Donald Trump on the US political scene has longtime allies concerned over whether the US can be a reliable security partner, former National Intelligence Officer and Trump administration National Security Council official Fiona Hill has said.

Speaking at the Principles First summit, a gathering of anti-Trump and pro-democracy conservatives in Washington, Ms Hill was asked to opine on how Mr Trump would have reacted to the killing of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny on his watch.

She told attendees the twice-impeached, disgraced ex-president, whose performance during a 2018 Helsinki press conference alongside Russian leader Vladimir Putin was so bad that she considered pulling a fire alarm to end it, might actually have reacted negatively to Navalny’s death if he thought it made him look bad.

“It’s really about how it reflects on him,” she said.

Andrew Feinberg has the story:

Donald Trump will deliver a keynote speech on the final day of CPAC in just under one hour, at 1 pm local time.

Watch the livestream here:

When he addressed this year’s Conservative Police Action Conference, right-wing commentator Michael Knowles addressed what he called a “kerfuffle” from last year’s remarks, when he said “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life.”

Last year’s statement – widely seen as a call for violence against trans people – was condemned by LGBT+ civil rights groups and the White House, amid an avalanche of anti-trans legislation aimed at young people across the country and fears of abuse and violence fuelled by the denial of trans existence.

At this year’s CPAC, he said he stands by his “observation” that “men can’t become women,” and that the backlash to his statement reveals the “identity crisis” facing an America in decline without religion.

His remarks on Thursday – part of a relatively lengthy diatribe condemning not only trans people but marriage equality, abortion rights and surrogacy – drew little attention outside the poorly attended convention hall, but underscored the ubiquity of anti-trans rhetoric that is threading nearly every single event at the conference and throughout Republican politics.