american mainstream. i m talking about main street americans in their millions. they come in all sizes, shapes and colors. blue collar workers, blacks, hispanics, shoe keepers, scholars, service people, housewives and professional men and women, they re the backbone of america. we can t move america without moving their hearts and minds, as well. they want all electric stoves all over the country. but we don t have the electric power for that. we want electric stoves, but we also want gas stoves. it s april fools . why do they want that? cpac then and now. the conservative conference has shifted in recent years to grievance politics. those two speeches 41 years apart. now, led by former president donald trump who delivered a dark speech, telling a sparse crowd at cpac, quote, i am your retribution. we ll have more of his remarks and what they mean for the 2024 presidential race just ahead. plus, we ll get a live report from springfield, ohio, where another norfolk south
is a grievance party right now. vaughan, clearly, donald trump is looking at the opponents in a potential primary and doesn t fear any of them. the only one getting some of his attention is ron desantis who, again, isn t in the race yet. as mo says, we don t know how he ll perform if he steps outside tallahassee, florida, onto a national stage. you covered these campaigns. you ve been on the ground. you ve been in arizona. you spent all the time. you know the energy of the republican party. should donald trump fear any of these opponents or potential opponents? tim scott, interesting potential candidate. i didn t hear his name mentioned one time at cpac over the course of the weekend. it s a fundamental base, grassroots base of this republican party. any candidate is going to need it. there is one potential candidate who is already down, and that is larry hogan, announcing yesterday he, the former maryland governor, he is not going to jump into this
someone has got to stand up to the bully. someone has got to stand up and say, i m going to do this differently. someone has got to be able to show that they are actually going to take the party in a different direction. so the primary electorate actually has a choice in front of them. right now, they re not getting that. they re getting a lot of other people who are saying, i ll give you what trump gives you, just less mean, just less crazy. someone has to step up and say, i ll give you something different so that there is a choice. then we ll see. that may not be enough to stop donald trump in a republican primary, but they have to try. vaughan, let s talk about the energy level of donald trump. was he low energy? was he high energy? what was the response in the room? still, 5,000 people were there. i m sorry, that s a big crowd. sure. it s a very decent, respectable showing for any candidate. they ve seen him nine years running, a lot of these activists. a lot of the go-to l
you could create daylight. look, i m not going to lead a riot. is it because they re fearful of republican voters who maybe don t agree with the violence of the day but bought the big lie, and so many to this moment don t think president biden was legitimately elected. there is i was saying 30%. i put it more at 40% of the republican primary electorate who, supportive of january 6th and donald trump. how do you position yourself as anything but the trump lane if you want a slice of those voters? that s the conundrum for these candidates, unless they can break that away. they won t. if it is a crowded field, which it looks like it is going to be, we know how this story ends. yeah. mo, talk to us about january 6th, but also, to vaughan s point earlier, trump is pulling his punches right now. yeah, he bashes candidates on truth social. no one sees that.
i hope that people are not engaging in the wish casting of thinking that you might not have that in the white house at sometime. in our closely divided country, anybody can come back. but vaughan was right to single out that one word he used, i am your retribution. this is what it is. this is what his campaign is about, and this is what his presidency would be about. yeah, certainly no guardrails would be in sight if there would be another trump presidency. let s be clear, mo, general elections are a different matter. there are real concerns as to whether he could win in november of 2024. but in terms of within the republican field, two months ago, there was real concerns whether trump would get this far. he wasn t campaigning. the legal pressure mounting. that s still certainly there, but suddenly, his campaign picked up. a rally coming up again, or they re scheduling it shortly. this was a statement. may been a diminished cpac, but