ORLANDO, Fla. Former President Donald J. Trump intends to use his first public appearance since leaving office to address President Biden and insist that there is no division within the Republican Party – even if he takes revenge take on the legislators who have broken with him.
In a speech prepared for his speech on Sunday afternoon during the annual Conservative political action conference, Mr. Trump plans to demand leadership from the IDP and isolate his critics in Congress.
“The Republican Party is united,” Mr. Trump according to excerpts shared by his post-presidential advisers. “The only divide is between a handful of political hacks in Washington DC and everyone across the country.”
Although much of the party’s popular ownership is devoted to the 74-year-old former president, he is considered less favorable by Republicans because of his refusal to accept defeat and his role in inciting the January 6 riots. .
A handful of GOP lawmakers were one of the loudest voices the party is asking for from Mr. Trump, the most prominent representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican, to continue.
In response to this, Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump jr., Repeatedly attacked Cheney in his remarks, and the former president is expected to target her on Sunday.
Many of his advisers, however, encouraged him to use his time on stage in Orlando to deliver a speech.
For this purpose, they also released an extract in which Mr. Trump will take on his successor in a way that is almost identical to what he said about Mr. Biden said when he himself was president.
“Joe Biden has had the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history,” Trump said in the prepared remarks. Because he ignores that schools remain closed during his own presidency, he also planned to kill Mr. Bid to appeal to schools. No more delays with special interest! ”
He will also Mr. Biden’s more liberal immigration policy calls it ‘immoral’ and a ‘betrayal of our country’s core values’, according to the extracts.
How carefully Mr. Trump prefers to follow a teleprompter script, however, is always an open question. And maybe never more than now, as he moved down from the White House to his resort in Palm Beach, stripped of his social media accounts.
His speech was designed by two of the former president’s White House speechwriters, Ross Worthington and Vince Haley, with input from other advisers.
The former president’s assistants were looking for an opportunity for him to re-emerge and debated whether he would like to host his own meeting or make use of the CPAC forum, which from Mr. Trump’s new home state has moved from suburban Washington because Florida has more restrictive coronavirus restrictions.
Mr. Trump and his assistants have been working with him on the speech for several days in his newly built office above the ballroom in Mar-a-Lago, his private club near the Atlantic Ocean. Without his Twitter entry, Mr. Trump uses specific moments in the news cycle – the death of talk show host Rush Limbaugh and Tiger Woods’ car crash – to inject himself into the news cycle.
Apart from prepared statements, however, he has said much less since 20 January about the future of IDP and his own continuing ambitions.
Mr. Trump’s advisers have said he does not intend to discuss a litany of his own achievements, and rather try to take a look back at how he sounded in 2016 as a candidate. Trump has made it clear to allies and advisers that at least he wants to be presidential candidate again in 2024, something he is expected to tease in his speech.
Yet, even with a built-in supportive audience, not everyone in the party believes that Trumpism is the way forward.
“CPAC is not the whole of the Republican Party,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of seven Republican senators who voted for Mr. Trump pleaded guilty to the House charge, Sunday said.
In CNN’s ‘State of the Union’, Mr. Cassidy said Republicans should pay attention to the voters who have switched over the past four years. “If we talk to the less certain voters, who went from President Trump to President Biden, we win. If we do not do this, we will lose, ‘said Mr. Cassidy said.
Jonathan Martin reports from Orlando, Fla., And Maggie Haberman from New York.