The annual meeting of CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) was held last week. It used to be the gathering where conservatives would have discussions about how to advance their policy goals in public life. These used to concern economics, foreign policy, and major social issues. But in the age when it seems like every conservative seeks to please serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), wonky panel discussions on weighty matters have given way to feeding red meat to the attendees on whatever things that SSAT chooses to rant about. Add to this, the multiple sexual assault allegations made against the CPAC chair Matt Schlapp that led to a $9 million lawsuit against him has cast a cloud over the organization.

Carlton Huffman, a Republican staffer on Herschel Walker’s US senate campaign, initially accused Schlapp of sexually assaulting him last year. Huffman had been assigned to drive Schlapp to campaign events in the Atlanta area and alleged Schlapp fondled him without his consent during a car ride in October 2022.

According to new reporting, based on court documents obtained by The Washington Post, Schlapp was also accused of sexual misconduct twice before – first in 2017 and then in early 2022. The updated court filing alleges the incidents were reported to staffers of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, but “no action was taken against Schlapp,” according to The Post.

Stephanie Mencipher, a reporter for the left wing Mother Jones magazine, used to attend CPAC sessions as an accredited press reporter and would feel the hostility of the attendees towards towards anyone sitting in the press box and when wandering around among the delegates, who saw in her press badge the sign that she was the enemy. This year Steve Bannon and CPAC organizers decided to deny press credentials to any organization or reporter whom they viewed as not one of them, so she paid to attend as one of the masses. She writes that the experience was very different and even better because now the attendees did not know that she was member of the hated media and dealt with her as a fellow conservative and let down their guard and spoke freely.

I wasn’t thrilled to be contributing $295 to a conservative organization currently spending a lot of its money defending Schlapp from a lawsuit by a male Senate campaign worker who alleges that Schlapp groped him in the car while he was working for Herschel Walker in Georgia. And yet, the general admission pass did not turn out to be the liberal own that Steve Bannon and the CPAC boss seemed to think it would be.

For instance, without my official press badge, people have been nice! No one has hissed “fake news” at me in the bathroom line. Rather than turn their backs and march away upon my approach, conference attendees have chatted me up unprompted. Admittedly, it felt a bit uncomfortable, and I usually disclosed that I was a reporter. But sometimes, they’d already let fly the unfiltered crazy stuff they would never have said on the record.
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After two days of passing as a CPAC attendee, I marveled at how weird it was to be on the other side like this. Over the past 15 years, I have attended dozens of right-wing conferences and events, even in the Trump White House, and always as a credentialed reporter. This time, instead of being treated like the enemy, I was briefly embraced as part of the tribe, and it became clear how seductive this could be for some people. I saw up close how people felt liberated to be their worst deplorable selves in what they believed was a safe space, surrounded by supportive, like-minded enablers.

It appears that neo-Nazis were openly attending and mingling and spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and finding allies.

Nazis appeared to find a friendly reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year.

Throughout the conference, racist extremists, some of whom had secured official CPAC badges, openly mingled with conference attendees and espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The presence of these individuals has been a persistent issue at CPAC. In previous years, conference organizers have ejected well-known Nazis and white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes.

But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017.

At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed “race science” and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
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Another, Ryan Sánchez, who was previously part of the Nazi “Rise Above Movement,” took photos and videos of himself at the conference with an official badge and touted associations with Fuentes.

In a photo published on his X profile, Sánchez shook hands with Jared Taylor inside CPAC’s secure conference area, writing “Jared Taylor is a hero of our people!” Taylor founded American Renaissance, an organization that has published racist, pro-eugenics writings. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Taylor as “crudely white supremacist.”

In another video, Sánchez can be seen in the lobby of the conference hotel giving a Nazi salute.
Other attendees in Sánchez’s company openly used the N-word.

Mencipher says that not all delegates were pleased with hot button anti-woke rhetoric replacing serious policy discussions. She recounted a discussion with a man.

My inquisitor had come to CPAC to see what people were saying about school choice and was disappointed to discover that the answer to that question was nothing. Education policy, he lamented, was nowhere to be found at this event. Indeed, what passed for policy discussions at CPAC this year was largely limited to mass deportations and attacks on trans athletes. The sober panels about the national debt, balancing the budget, or Social Security reform that once commanded top billing were a relic of another era before CPAC became an extension of Trump Inc., devoted to all the MAGA grievances like racial equity, the evils of windmills, or bans on gas stoves.
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After two days of passing as a CPAC attendee, I marveled at how weird it was to be on the other side like this. Over the past 15 years, I have attended dozens of right-wing conferences and events, even in the Trump White House, and always as a credentialed reporter. This time, instead of being treated like the enemy, I was briefly embraced as part of the tribe, and it became clear how seductive this could be for some people. I saw up close how people felt liberated to be their worst deplorable selves in what they believed was a safe space, surrounded by supportive, like-minded enablers.

The American conservative movement, even though I disagreed with pretty much everything they stood for, once did have principles and ideas that could be debated. SSAT has degraded everything so that what passes for ‘conservative policies’ is now whatever nutty things he decides to obsess over.