What A Day - Conservatism's Biggest Conference Was Missing Its Star

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Over the past decade or so, the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, has become a massive gathering of right-wing power brokers — but this year, President Trump didn’t go. Neither did Vice President JD Vance nor Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The lackluster convention seemed to mirror a MAGA movement that’s looking increasingly unmoored. Ben Jacobs is a Washington-based political reporter who has been going to CPAC for years. We talked about his trip to the 2026 convention and what made this year so different from the others.And in headlines, Trump makes yet another threat against Iran, Transportation Security Administration workers start receiving some backpay, and TMZ is giving members of Congress the tabloid treatment.Show Notes: Check out Ben's reporting – slate.com/author/ben-jacobs Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Tuesday, March 31st. I'm Jane Koston, and this is what a day. The show that learned a group of January 6th insurrectionists are suing the federal government for what Politico describes as, quote, physical and emotional injuries. The insurrectionists are asking for more than $18 million. And you know what? With Trump in office, they just might get it. On today's show, good news. Transportation Security Administration workers started receiving some back pay for all of their hard work, and TMZ is giving members of Congress the tabloid treatment.

Lindsay Graham is the new Lindsay Lohan. But let's start with a conservative political action conference or CPAC. Over the past decade or so, CPAC has become a massive gathering of right-wing power brokers. Everyone who wanted to be a big deal in GOP politics needed to make an appearance, which may be why you saw Elon Musk waving a chainsaw at last year's conference, or President Donald Trump at every single CPAC for a decade. But Trump didn't go this year. Actually, no Trumps were at this year's CPAC, not even Tiffany.

Neither were Vice President J.D. Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Instead, Trumpers had the pleasure of listening to the man with the golden voice, health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who told the single most unbelievable story about Donald Trump that I have ever heard in my life. During the campaign, I was on the airplane with him, and we were sitting across the table from each other eating McDonald's drinking diet coat. And we started talking about Syria, and he got a place mad, and he turned it on his back, and he took

a Sharpie, and he drew a perfect map of the Midees, and then he put the troop strength of every country on every border on that. map, and it just challenged a lot of the assumptions that I had been told about him. Sure. But this year's lackluster CPAC seems to mirror a MAGA movement that's looking increasingly unmoored. As Trump's polling continues to decline amidst economic malaise in an unpopular war, the political movement entirely centered on his wants and needs is beginning to fray at the edges. Lots of people at CPAC support everything Trump does, including the Iran war. But I'm worried wondering, are there enough of those people to counterbalance all of the people who voted for Trump in

2024 and are now experiencing serious buyers remorse? Ben Jacobs is a Washington-based political reporter who has been going to CPAC for years. We talked about his trip to the 2020s convention and what made this year so different from the others. Ben, welcome to what today. Jane, thanks for having me. In your experience, what is CPAC typically like? And who actually goes? What is it supposed to be doing for conservatives? CPAC has had many functions throughout the years. I mean, we can go back that it started in the 70s. These were the insurgent conservatives brawling behind Ronald Reagan, taking on the deep state

of left liberal Gerald Ford. In more recent times, as the conservative movement sort of has subsumed the Republican Party, it's become a factual battleground a little bit. In the 2010s, you had to start polls where Ron Pauling of the party would win, that this would be swarmed with young Americans for Liberty, these young, you know, Ron Paul kids, later Rand Paul kids. And it sort of was a sense of sort of some of where the vibes were. They didn't sort of have the base of the movement. Ron Paul was not winning the stolid Dutch farmers in northwest Iowa.

But it was a sense of, you know, where some of the activists were. This was sort of young people. This also was a big trade convention that there were candidates looking for donors, consultants looking for candidates, that this was a big place to meet in In recent years, it's become very much a one-stop, one-band shop for Trump. This is MAGA all the way. It's not really a place where things are debated. This is just pure MAGA. You are as likely to see someone who stormed the Capitol on January 6th as you are someone

who voted for Ron DeSantis, let alone Nikki Haley in 2024. I know Donald Trump wasn't there. No Trumps were there. But why do you think it was just so different this year? I've been reading a lot of the reporting, and even right-wing outlets are saying that it was just a complete train wreck and juiceless. Look, it's been going in this direction for a while. The organization has gone through its own internal struggles with allegations and misconduct against Matt Schlapp, who leads it, that there's been sort of turning point USA rising up and taking a lot of the mojo.

that, you know, to paraphrase Daniel DeLewis, T.P.USA. drank Z-Pax milkshake. There's not many students at this point that this is sort of a narrow, an hour and slice, and this is really a legacy brand. This is a vestigial brand of something that used to mean something much bigger in American politics. Not quite there anymore. I think the best example of this is Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform Party, used to be a CPAC regular. Now he's potentially the next prime minister. He was nowhere to be found. But instead, Liz Truss kept on appearing on panels and at parties. Liz Truss, of course, who was prime minister for 40 days and lost a popularity contest to a head of lettuce.

That's a sense of where this is, that this is trading on nostalgia in name brand as opposed to having any juice. That the juice is slowly dried out. And once you lost Trump, that sort of made it official. What issue or topic appeared to be most prominent for those who actually attended CPAC? If the panels were a lot about rallying around Trump, the speakers were rallying around Trump, there was a lot of concern about Sharia law. One Texas elected official went right into pretty blatant Islamophobia. You know, there was stuff about trans issues. But Iran, the military conflict in Iran, this was not something that was debating conflict.

And even the people who were against our involvement, the involvement in the conflict were sort of guarded about it. Matt Gates weren't against ground troops in any. Iran, that it's sort of nothing about where we are now. And Steve Bannon just sort of loom darkly about, you know, the idea of your sons and daughters could be going off to fight along the Straits of Hermuzh without sort of weighing in, but, you know, trying to be clear where he was. But this was at least a quarter Iranian Marnikas that, you know, that normally these things are Make America Great Again, lack her up.

This year was Javid Shah. It was a really different event with how much these folks, because Reza Polivey, the son of the late Shah, was a speaker and they really swarmed the event. And, you know, this was as much lying and sun as stars and stripes. It's pretty wild that you have an event that is within recent memories so focused on America First. And then it seems to be taken over by people who are talking a lot about reclaiming a throne. that hasn't been claimed since 1979. Yes, no, and it was, of course, ironic that Pahlavi was speaking at CPAC as you had liberals at No King's demonstrations, which made pretty interesting by it.

I mean, CPAC has in recent years become much more international, that it's sort of the idea of Steve Bannon's populist model UN, but they're always sort of bits, you know, they're chunks of Hungarians, there are chunks of Brazilians, you know, they're a bunch of Salvadorians who showed up in Washington, D.C. to Chirbukele, but it wasn't overwhelming. This really was entirely overwhelming. You'd drive into the event. There was a set up right outside with alternating Iranian, pre-1979 Iranian flags with the lion and son and American flags. One day you had a stretch where there is just alternating pictures of Trump, Reza Polavi, Bibi, Marco Rubio coming along the way. And then once you got in, this was, you know, 25% Iranians would be my guess, like, you know, that it was sort of really, you know, distinctly there.

And it meant that the room was absolutely packed for Reza-Palavi. And afterwards, it emptied relatively quickly. It was, they were there for Polavi. They were not there, you know, to see Rick Grinnell or Liz Truss or any of the other sort of usual suspect with CPAC speakers. When you talk to people and you asked about the Iran war, did it seem like there was any concern about losing the support of those people who weren't in support of the war? There was a little bit concerned, but look, this is such a pro-Trump crowd.

Like, let's double back that, you know, you're talking about whether people who are ready to overturn the 2020 election have concerns about overthrowing the Iranian regime. Good point. This is, you know, people who they may have sort of qualms like, I don't know, like ground troops, I don't want this, but they're trusting in Trump. They're seeing that there's a master plan. This is about Venezuela and Cuba and oil. They made it through the Axis Hollywood tapes. They're, you know, they're making it through some airstrikes in the Middle East. Yeah. I've always thought that the Trump-era CPAC is as close as you can come to what we'd be like to go to like a fan convention for Trump. Yes.

Now, we mentioned the straw poll a little bit earlier, and that's one of the historically big parts of CPAC. where attendees put in their picks for their next presidential nominee. This year, Vice President J.D. Vance won. He wasn't there. Marco Rubio came in second. He also wasn't there. What conversations did you hear about where the GOP wants to go after Trump? I don't think they were sort of ready to go someplace after Trump.

Trump is still there that they sort of like JD, like certainly like Marco, but this was not, this was not future looking. It's been very interesting that even if you go back to looking at who, who's sort of testing the waters a little bit in earlier states. If you go back to this time four years ago, all sorts of people are going to Iowa, all sorts of people are going to New Hampshire. They're not doing that this time around, even though Trump is at least nominally a lame duck. And yeah, I talked to people, rejected the idea Trump's a lame doc.

He's still in there. He is all sorts of power. Yeah. And this is a particular slice of the Republican Party. We shouldn't assume that this is the average Republican voter, let alone the average Republican primary voter. But, you know, Trump's there, Trump's their guy, he's back, and why look that far ahead? Ben, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me, Jane. That was my conversation with Ben Jacobs, a political reporter who wrote about the 2026 CPAC for Slate. We will link to his work

on the show notes. Unlike CPAC, we are a Malays-free podcast. So if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a day is brought to you by Zbiotics. Let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I have to make a choice so I can either have a great night or a great next day. That is until I found pre-alcohol. Zbiatic's pre-alcohol probiotic drink is a world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted

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Here's what else we're following today. Head of lines. Joining me is Crooked's Washington correspondent, Matt Berg, to talk about the big stories. Hey, Matt. Hey, Jane. Matt, do you remember when Trump said that he could wrap up the war with Iran like super quickly? Oh, yeah. And everything was going to be super fast and basically we already won and the war is over.

Here's a reporter asking White House press. Secretary Caroline Levitt for a new estimate on when the war will end on Monday. And then on Iran, on the time frame, President Trump initially said about four weeks. Secretary of State Rubio on Friday reportedly said it might be another two to four. It's two to four the current ballpark that the administration is thinking. With respect to the timeline, again, the president, commander in chief, the Pentagon has always stated four to six weeks estimated timeline for Operation Epic Fury. We're on day 30 today.

So again, you do the math. She sounds so self-satisfied. And also, so I guess that means that we have two more weeks of war. Is that how this is going to work? What is this Groundhog Day? And Trump made threats against Iran on Monday, like he does, saying that he might blow up the country's energy infrastructure and desalination plants without a peace deal soon.

And blowing up desalination plants would be a possible war crime under international law, even though I know Trump doesn't care. And that's not even all that he might do. according to the Wall Street Journal, he's considering sending in troops to extract some 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran, which is, you know, could be risky for a couple of reasons. I mean, first, you're sending a lot of troops in to do a mission that you don't know could actually work. And second, you don't know how long they would even be there. But, Jane, remember, on Monday, Trump said that peace talks are going great. Even though the peace talks may not be peace talks. Also, a spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry told reporters that the U.S. proposal for peace, was, quote, unrealistic, illogical, and excessive, which that just kind of sounds like Donald Trump to me. But there's some kind of good news. Most TSA workers received some back pay Monday following an order from Trump on Friday. Now, Trump could have signed an order to pay TSA weeks

ago, but now that he has, Matt, could this shutdown of DHS just go on forever? That is a huge question that everyone in D.C. is asking right now, and no one really has a answer to. Today is the 46th day of the shutdown. And you probably remember that the House and the Senate are on recess until the week of April 14th. And there probably will not be any movement on the shutdown until they get back. And it's important to remember that the shutdown in the fall broke a record for the longest shutdown in government history. And this one broke that record was also under a Republican trifecta. So this is not going to play well for Republicans. but Americans who are traveling may finally be catching a break.

Remember the Congress are definitely not. TMZ, the gossip news site, is asking people to send pictures of Congresspeople who are on vacation during the shutdown, and it's actually working. Yeah, like, if TMZ can find a celebrity smoking a cigarette in a gas station in a town that you've never heard of, they will find South Carolina Republican Senator and Iran war enthusiast to Lindsey Graham, and they will find him enjoying himself at Disney World. in Florida. He was reportedly dining at Chef Mickey's for Sunday brunch, standing with a bubble wand and boarding space mountain. I hope he had fun. Here's my favorite part, Matt. Graham told TMZ

that he was meeting with Trump officials in Florida and met up with friends in Orlando afterwards. Now, I assume the friends were not Donald Duck, but who knows? Like, it's Lindsay Graham. Anything could happen. It's also kind of surprising that, you know, this is not just limited to only Republicans. At least one Democratic lawmaker was also caught up in this. Someone also spotted California Democratic representative Robert Garcia at a casino in Las Vegas after having lunch with his dad. Garcia responded via tweet writing, quote, actually, I don't mind what TMZ is doing here, adding, quote, speaker Mike Johnson should have never sent us all home.

I guess when you can't beat them, you should join them. I guess that's Garcia's take here. Now, Representative Robert Garcia, you cannot blame your lunch trip to Vegas. on Mike Johnson. Like, it's not like, Mike Johnson didn't take you to the airport. He did not buy your lunch. But Matt, this is a reminder that what happens in Vegas absolutely does not stay in Vegas. As always, it was nice talking to you, but if I were a member of Congress, I would not hang out with you in Vegas. Well, I'd hang out with you anywhere, Jane, so thanks for having me. And that's the news. Before we go, the Virtual Empire City Podcast Club from Crooked

ideas kicks off today, March 31st. Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD, is Crooked's award-winning series tracing how the New York City Police Department became the largest police force in the world, and why that history still shapes today's headlines. Join host Chintraai Comanika as he impacts how that power was built, who it served, and what it means for public safety now. In the podcast club, you'll go beyond the episodes, connecting the dots, wrestling with the big questions, and imagining what real safety could look like for all of us. Sign up at Crooked Ideas.org slash Empire City. That's all for today.

If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, wonder about Vice President J.D. Vance's views on aliens and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, and not just about how for reasons I do not understand, Vance decided to tell right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson that he thinks aliens or demons, but then couldn't back up his opinion at all. Well, look, I think that celestial beings who fly around, to do weird things to people. I think that the desire to describe everything,

celestial, everything is otherworldly, to describe it as aliens. I mean, every great world religion, including Christianity, the one that I believe in, has understood that there are weird things out there. Like me, Water Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe.

I'm Jane Koston. And come on, J.D. Explain how aliens are demons are demons. Get into the theology of alien demons. Get weird. What Today is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Four.

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