It’s also possible, however, that the main problem with CPAC is CPAC itself. The conference has suffered in recent years from competition, most notably from Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk’s conservative youth group. (T-shirts featuring Kirk as martyr are a hot item in the CPAC exhibit hall.) Turning Point’s national convention in December drew a whopping 30,000 people, which seems about 10 times larger than the occupancy of the Gaylord convention hall.
Even CPAC’s relatively paltry numbers seem padded with enough international visitors to make it a juicy target for ICE Director Tom Homan, who was a featured speaker on Thursday. Chief among these retinues is a huge contingent of conservative South Korean “stop the steal” activists associated with former president Yoon Suk Yeol. Yeol was impeached last year, and in February, he was sentenced to life in prison for starting an insurrection.
But the organization behind CPAC also seems troubled. I’ve been attending CPAC regularly since 2009, mostly when it was held in the DC area. It usually seemed like a decently well-oiled machine. But this year, its Grapevine event feels like it’s coming apart at the seams. Its buggy app wasn’t updated with the schedule until late Wednesday night, and it was clearly being tinkered with all day on Thursday, with headlines for sessions becoming snappier by the hour. A panel originally focused generically on “fraud” was transformed into “Ilhan Omar ‘Family’ Values.”
As of 5:30 pm on Thursday, there was still no public schedule available for Friday or Saturday, and new speakers were still being announced on social media throughout the day. “CPAC is proud to announce that Andrew Giuliani is a confirmed speaker for CPAC USA 2026,” came the news Thursday morning. The son of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is the current White House director of the FIFA World Cup task force. Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen once famously said that the younger Giuliani “may be dumber than Eric Trump,” making the former pro-golfer’s addition to the CPAC agenda a mixed bag.
Thursday’s announcement of the last-minute addition of HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. may help offset some of the disappointment with this year’s CPAC offerings. Even so, it can’t help the convention’s appeal that Schlapp is its MC. In 2024, the CPAC chairman settled a sexual misconduct lawsuit, reportedly for almost $500,000, filed by a man working on Hershel Walker’s 2022 Georgia Senate campaign who had accused Schlapp of groping him in the car.
Nonetheless, Schlapp still plays an outsized role in the convention, which is reflected in his salary. He earned more than $830,000 in tax year 2023, according to the group’s most recent IRS 990 form. Listed as “the Honorable Matt Schlapp” on the CPAC schedule, apparently in reference to his service as George W. Bush’s White House political director, he is the moderator of a disproportionate number of panels, along with his wife, (the Honorable) Mercedes Schlapp, who worked in the first Trump White House.
In fairness, not everyone seems disappointed with the event. I found Enrique Tarrio, the former chairman of the Proud Boys, hanging out and watching Matt Gaetz record his OAN show in the CPAC exhibit hall. Tarrio seemed glad to be here and not in prison. In January last year, Trump pardoned him, saving him from a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy related to his involvement in the January 6 riot. He told me he comes to every CPAC and that this one was the same as in 2018, another non-presidential election season.
Tarrio said that a lot of people want to see Trump, and now that Trump doesn’t seem to be coming, they’re not that interested. He said some people at his hotel had cancelled based on the B-list offerings. But he shrugged it off, attributing the turnout to the normal political cycle rather than as a reflection on the current state of MAGA or CPAC itself. After all, he said, “It’s a midterm year.”
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