Trump Targets Democrat Policies in CPAC Speech

Darlene McCormick SanchezAugust 7, 2022

Former President Donald Trump told conservatives gathered in Texas that senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) will pay the ultimate political price for backing a $739 billion bill investing heavily in green energy.

Trump made the remarks during a speech to an audience of some 5,000 attendees as the final speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday.

In a straw poll, conservatives gave Trump a 99 percent job-approval rating, and 69 percent said they would support him as their Republican presidential nominee for 2024. Florida’s Ron DeSantis came in a distant second at 24 percent.

The former president, who has all but announced his intentions to run again in 2024, predicted that the Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act will cost Manchin and Sinema their seats in the U.S. Senate.

Trump said the massive spending bill will exacerbate inflation, which already sits at a 40-year high.

Trump overwhelmingly carried West Virginia in the 2020 election but narrowly lost in Arizona—one of the states where concerns were raised about election irregularities.

Trump had vowed to campaign against Manchin if the senator passed the bill, which conservatives and others see as being at odds with the interests of many livelihoods in the coal-producing state.

“We had the greatest economy in the history of the world. We had no inflation,” Trump said, adding that President Joe Biden’s inflation is already costing families thousands of dollars per year.

Trump’s policy proposals in the speech included making cities safe, instilling the death penalty for drug traffickers, re-securing the border, and abolishing the Department of Education.

“The election was rigged and stolen, and now our country is being systematically destroyed,” Trump said.

The first job the next Congress and administration should tackle is restoring public safety, Trump added, pointing to Chicago’s