Even CPAC Is Over It

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Remember CPAC? The Conservative Political Action Conference used to be the Republican Party’s Super Bowl, a multi-day bacchanal where some of the conservative movement’s most influential voices came together to set the GOP’s national agenda. Top conservative leaders used to battle it out for a chance to speak to CPAC’s throngs of true believers. 

This year’s four-day conference lacked the sense of triumphant celebration that once made CPAC the center of the conservative world. Maybe that’s because CPAC 2026 unfolded under the growing storm clouds of sky-high oil prices, a spiraling war in Iran, and Donald Trump’s record unpopularity. At times, the proceedings felt more like a party coming to terms with a looming and unavoidable political disaster. 

In this week’s Truth About, we’re digging into what went down at CPAC and why it spells trouble not only for Trump, but for the entire MAGA movement — unless you happen to be Marco Rubio. Let’s dive in.

— Max Burns

If you want to know what young conservatives think, go to CPAC. The conference has long been the most popular event for the GOP’s youth activists, and this year’s convention was no different. But unlike prior years, when the convention largely served as an opportunity for the MAGA movement to flex its muscles, this year’s events saw a conservative youth movement largely at odds with the president who brought them into politics. For plenty of young CPAC Republicans, Trump’s second term is starting to look like a terrible mistake.

If CPAC’s young conservatives had to sum up their frustration with the Trump administration in one word, it would be Iran. That was certainly the case for 30-year-old combat veteran Joseph Bolick, who complained to Politico that Trump “lied about everything” when it came to keeping America out of war. 

“If you go into a war where there’s no end game, how is it going to end?” Bolick asked. “There’s no clear objective.”

A Politico poll conducted in March found that fewer than half of Republicans under 35 believe Trump has a plan for Iran. Those younger voters were largely responsible for putting Trump back into the White House in 2024. Now they feel betrayed to the point of losing hope in the MAGA movement itself. And the younger the Republican, the less likely they were to support Trump or his MAGA ideology. 

“I think that MAGA is dying. I do,” 27-year-old GOP strategist Samantha Cassell told the New York Times. “There’s no serious discussion going on. It’s just flat.” Some prominent Republican speakers shared Cassell’s view, including disgraced former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who used his CPAC platform to loudly criticize Trump’s decision to invade Iran. That’s the kind of open dissent that would have been unimaginable in Trump’s first term. Now it’s commonplace.

“We keep hearing these talking points that we’re all united and in the same movement. That couldn’t be further from the truth,” said 19-year-old Aiden Hoffses. ”I feel like I have closer views with liberals than more conservatives at this point.”

The MAGA movement is losing young people in large part because it simply isn’t delivering on the big promises Trump made during the 2024 campaign. Far from taming inflation and creating high-paying jobs, Trump has presided over skyrocketing consumer prices and an economy that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says is creating zero new jobs for the first time in history. Economists now suggest a recession is a near certainty. Young Republicans want their promised Golden Age. Instead, they’re getting the worst economy in a generation and a directionless Middle Eastern war.

“He ran on ‘no new wars.’ There’s a new war,” 19-year-old Razi Marshall fumed to the Washington Post. “He ran on making stuff more affordable. Stuff’s less affordable. So in my life, I would say overall, I’m less than pleased.

If the White House needed any indication of just how unpopular Donald Trump is among the people who make up his base, look no further than CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp’s headline speech. At one point in his remarks, Schlapp rhetorically asked the audience if they’d like to see impeachment hearings against Trump. The crowd unexpectedly erupted into cheers, leading Schlapp to scold them for their disloyalty.

“No!” Schlapp shouted. “That was the wrong answer!” So he asked the question a second time. Again, the crowd of frustrated Republicans erupted in cheers and applause. Eventually, Schlapp gave up. 

Seeing a full room of Republican activists cheering for Donald Trump’s impeachment must have come as a shock to Schlapp, but there’s good evidence that the White House already anticipated just how unpopular The Donald has become. Trump chose to skip CPAC this year, citing his busy schedule. Sure, whatever. To the MAGA base, Trump’s sudden unwillingness to speak to them is just another sign of his betrayal, especially when they discovered that Trump was clearing his schedule to speak at a Saudi Arabia-funded investment conference later this week. Whoops! 

In his absence, one-time allies like former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince took the opportunity to distance themselves from Trump’s increasingly unpopular agenda. “I counseled as loud as possible against doing this in the first place,” Prince said of Trump’s decision to attack Iran. Privately, some conservative leaders even floated the idea of supporting Secretary of State Marco Rubio in 2028 instead of Vice President JD Vance as a way to move the GOP away from Trump’s wounded MAGA movement. You bet the White House heard that message loud and clear.

If Trump remains this unpopular — and continues alienating younger Republican voters at the rate polls are currently showing — the civil war for the future of the Republican Party could kick off sooner than anyone expected. Rubio has clearly grown comfortable with the idea that he can offer the GOP a way out of the MAGA swamp, and his strong performance in the CPAC 2028 presidential straw poll ensures that chatter will only increase in the months to come.

Less clear is whether a GOP split between MAGA and post-MAGA factions could actually win in 2028, especially if Trump is still alive and intimately involved in fanning the flames of party conflict. As Trump grapples with his fading legacy in the movement he founded, he will try ever more extreme ways to recenter himself in the national narrative. If the past year has been any indication, those efforts will prove toxic to his base and disastrous to the nation. 

This year’s CPAC showcased a Republican Party in flux. Republicans are unhappy with their present and uncertain about their future. A growing number of them blame Trump for the chaos consuming the nation and regret their decision to return him to power. Welcome to the club.