‘It Was Rapturous’: Dave Weigel Reports On CPAC Fawning Over Elon Musk, Drew a ‘Bigger Crowd Than JD Vance’
Semafor political reporter Dave Weigel joined MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday to discuss what he saw at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) the night before, which included a Nazi-like salute from Steve Bannon and a wild appearance from Elon Musk in sunglasses with a chainsaw.
“We’ve invoked Elon Musk’s appearance at CPAC a couple times this morning. You were there. You saw Steve Bannon make an interesting hand gesture. You saw Musk with the chainsaw and the sunglasses and some rather incoherent answers. We’re seeing some polls right now that Musk’s popularity are really on the decline. But I assume in that room he was received well. Take us behind the scenes about what you saw at CPAC?” Jonathan Lemire began.
“Well, it was it was rapturous. A bigger crowd than JD Vance, who was earlier in the morning, had a bigger security line than, than Elon Musk did. But the rumor that Musk is going to be at the conference broke out, that it was confirmed middle of the day. And he is adored by the conservative activists who show up at CPAC,” Weigel continued, adding:
Mike Johnson, I think I articulated, which is that maybe, maybe in a self-defeating way for him as the Speaker of the House, he was telling his interviewer on stage that Elon is doing the sort of things that the Republicans have wanted to do for years. They control Congress. I don’t know why they’re not doing them. But the idea that you needed somebody to go in and smash the system as it exists — incredibly popular at CPAC.
This is something that the people showing up to this conference have waited for generations to do. Each part of this, some dissents on whether it’s a great thing to decouple our relationships with Western Europe the way that we’re doing. But the idea of going in and slashing government and also picking the targets that he’s picking — very popular in that room.
We’ll listen to Ben Wikler now talking about who is being affected by these cuts. Every campaign needs to find a target and polarize it. The target aspect was more U.S. aid workers. Or let’s name the craziest-sounding grants we can that went out to Ghana. Let’s see if we can get gender somewhere in the name of this grant. Let’s make fun of it. Less so about government employees being fired who might be of some use to farmers.
There might be some senior citizens. Veterans were being laid off. You didn’t really hear what the argument might be in two months since he didn’t hear that. You heard this, bro in confidence. Now that what Elon is doing is a generational change. Liberals can’t undo it and Americans are eventually going to love it.
“A stark contrast of the rapturous response in the room to those cuts in CPAC versus the frustration we heard that town hall in Georgia at the top of the show. That dynamic would be fascinating to watch,” Lemire concluded.
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
