Raw Story

MS NOW host Catherine Rampell took a sharp jab at President Donald Trump on Sunday for skipping the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention for the first time in nearly a decade, suggesting he did so to avoid embarrassing optics tied to his “obsession” with crowd sizes.

“If we know anything about Donald Trump, it is his obsession with a handful of fairly specific things: gold plating, the Village People, and of course, crowd sizes. So you can only imagine how he must feel seeing this split screen,” Rampell said on MS NOW’s “The Weekend Primetime,” queuing up a split-screen video of the massive No Kings rallies and the CPAC event in Texas.

“On the left side, you have the absolutely massive No Kings day protests which took over small towns, big cities all over the place, all around the world. Organizers say at least eight million people showed up. And then on the right side of your screen you have CPAC. Womp, womp. Notice a difference?”

This year’s CPAC conference notably does not have either Trump or any of his children speaking at the event, often a strong draw for conservatives to attend the event. Turnout appears to have suffered as a result, Mother Jones reported.

“It’s sh----,” said GOP delegate Warner Kimo Sutton of the event’s turnout, speaking with Mother Jones. “Last time this place was packed.”

President Donald Trump criticized Republican Senate leadership Sunday for having supported a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without funding for two key immigration enforcement agencies, calling their actions “a shame.”

“It's a shame. They should really just go to a filibuster, they should terminate the filibuster and they should vote, that's what I think,” Trump told a reporter aboard Air Force One on Sunday.

“I think the Senate is playing it too soft – the Republicans. They're wonderful people, but we're dealing with very sick individuals – the Democrats are sick, there's something wrong, they're like terrorists!”

In the middle of the night last week, the Senate passed a bill to fund DHS and end the ongoing partial government shutdown that has sparked chaos and long lines at airports nationwide. House Republican leadership, however, rejected the bill and instead put forward their own alternative to fund DHS.

Conservative activist and lobbyist Matthew Schlapp was left speechless Friday after attempting to “hype up” the crowd at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference in Texas, only for the effort to backfire spectacularly.

“How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?” Schlapp asked the massive crowd at the annual conservative event.

To Schlapp’s surprise, a wave of cheers erupted from the crowd.

“No,” Schlapp responded, shaking his head and smiling awkwardly. “That was the wrong answer. Let me try it again: how many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?”

Schlapp’s second attempt garnered a more mixed response, with some still cheering while others booed.

Schlapp again laughed off the unexpected response.

“Can someone bring some coffee out for the people at CPAC?” he said.

CPAC was founded in 1974, with President Ronald Reagan delivering the organization’s first-ever inaugural keynote speech. It’s held regular annual conferences in years since, with President Donald Trump delivering a speech at the organization’s conference in 2024.

Schlapp, 58, has long been involved in Republican politics, having served as President George W. Bush’s deputy assistant. Schlapp previously served as CPAC’s chair, and currently runs a lobbying firm with close ties to the Trump administration.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan talked to one attendee at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, who slammed President Donald Trump over his war in Iran.

"I'm at CPAC in Dallas," O'Sullivan explained on Thursday. "It's the biggest conservative conference in the country. And lots of people here are talking about the war in Iran. Trump is not speaking at this event this year."

"But in the past, when he has spoken here, he's talked a lot about not starting new wars," he noted.

Attendee Alex Stone told O'Sullivan that he was "not happy" with Trump because of the war.

"I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all. I mean, President Trump ran on no new wars," he explained. "I feel like we've been co-opted into a war that shouldn't be ours. It should be Israel's."

Do you still support him? the CNN correspondent wondered.

"I want him to succeed," Stone hedged. "I think it's to be determined on, you know, if I can remain to support him. We'll see how the next six months go, and I'll see what happens."

"We hear the phrase America first," he added. "Let's put America first."

However, many CPAC attendees still supported the president.

"This is not a war," Shawn Michael insisted. "Oh my God, I absolutely support the president of the United States of America!"

In an interview with MS NOW’s Rosa Flores, two women attending the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, claimed they first resisted Donald Trump’s war on Iran and have now come around to his point of view, and later added that Barron Trump should enlist and ship off to Iran if the president puts boots on the ground.

One unidentified woman explained to Flores, “I started off pretty upset with the war. I have an 18-year-old son, so that really hit close to home. We had to get him registered for the Selective Service and everything, and so I wasn't happy about it. But then I saw these three boys that were publicly hung in Iran. That regime has been threatening Americans and has been killing Americans for years. If my son was called to go, I would still support the war.”

After the previously filmed clip was over, Flores added, “Now, Chris, I asked that mother, what about Barron Trump? She was there with her friend, and both mothers agreed that if soldiers were sent to war, if this woman's son was sent to war, they both agreed that Barron Trump should also serve in the military. And I said, ‘Well, do you think that he would actually do that?” And they said, well, they think that he would do the right thing.”

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President Donald Trump's cascading failures in the Iran war — from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to the collapse of his regime-change fantasy — stem from a single fatal flaw: the president doesn't actually believe other people have agency, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued Wednesday.

And that leaves him vulnerable.

"Over his decades on the public stage, we have seen little to no evidence that he believes in the existence of other minds," Bouie wrote, calling Trump "without question, the most solipsistic person ever to occupy the Oval Office."

The result, Bouie argued, is an administration that keeps getting blindsided by entirely predictable consequences of its own actions, from public outrage over DOGE, to backlash over the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to Iran's decision to close the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate against Gulf state allies.

None of it, according to Bouie, was planned for.

Trump appears to have expected Iran to fold the same way Venezuela did earlier this year, a "replay fantasy" that has since crashed into a more complex reality, Bouie wrote. That has left him trapped in an "escalation spiral," in which the president has no choice but to keep doubling down when one approach fails.

Bouie pressed the question of why the White House fails to see what others could easily predict.

"This gets to the real problem. Trump is famously indifferent to the concerns of those around him," he wrote, slapping the president with the label of a "consummate narcissist."

Trump's flaw is an opportunity for opposition, Bouie added. He is "a weak and deeply unpopular president," who also happens to be "cursed with a kind of blindness," wrote Bouie. That means he cannot see that his "opposition is real," and won't see it when it acts, Bouie concluded.