CPAC 2026 A Guide: The Fragile Coalition, the International Surge, and the Rebellion That’s Coming

Dispelling the Myth That CPAC 2026 Was “Underattended”

Look, I’ve been to every single CPAC since 2012. Every one. The only years I missed were those three years they had me locked up over January 6th – even though I wasn’t even at the Capitol. So when the media and the online crowd started calling CPAC 2026 in Grapevine some half-empty flop, I had to shake my head. I was there. I walked the floors. I sat in the sessions. And I’m telling you straight: the “underattended” story is pure nonsense from people who never showed up.

The venue is the biggest reason the photos looked off. For years we were at the Gaylord National outside D.C. – about 545,000 square feet, solid enough. But the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine? That place feels four times bigger once you’re inside. The layout is wide open with sprawling halls and massive ballrooms. What the media labeled “empty seats” were cherry-picked shots snapped during breaks or before speakers took the stage. Walk in during a real panel and the energy was there. The pictures were deceptive.

Scheduling didn’t help matters either. A lot of the final speaking times weren’t released until the day before. And this wasn’t a quick trip from D.C. – it’s Texas. The typical East Coast attendee who plans months ahead didn’t get the word in time. Then President Trump announced he wasn’t coming. First time in nearly a decade. Plenty of people show up to CPAC just to see him – it turns into a rally atmosphere. He was tied up with the Iran situation, and most of us understood that. But it still took some of the draw away.

We’ve seen this pattern before. Back in 2018, right before the midterms, attendance was noticeably lighter too. Same thing this year. When the base feels like Trump is winning – and he is – people get complacent. They figure everything will be fine, so they stay home, handle their lives, and trust the guy they voted for. That complacency, combined with the growing infighting, could hurt us badly in the midterms if we’re not careful. It’s not that they’ve lost interest. It’s the quiet danger that comes with success. The influencer class measures everything by likes and retweets, but everyday conservatives aren’t glued to their phones 24/7.

One moment that proved the room was still alive was Brandon Straka. I missed his speech live, but I caught the full thing online right after he spoke. It was one of the best I’ve heard in fourteen years at CPAC. He didn’t hold back. He called out the tribalism, the podcaster wars, the MTG drama, and the character-assassination nonsense creeping into MAGA. He spoke about the J6 prisoners we’re still forgetting – including Matthew Perna, who took his own life – and why we need raw honesty instead of spin. He explained how blind loyalty to any faction is the most unpatriotic thing we can do right now. The crowd responded strongly. He posted the speech on X and called it “one of the most important speeches I’ve given in years.” He was right – unity through truth.

Contrast that with Josh Hammer’s divisive and nasty speech in the exhibition hall. This is the same guy who spent the 2024 Republican primary campaigning against Trump – writing major pieces like “The Case for Ron DeSantis” in Newsweek, where he called Trump an “eccentric, larger-than-life Baby Boomer who obsesses over relitigating the last election” and pushed DeSantis as the “disciplined, mission-oriented” alternative who could actually beat Biden. Hammer was all-in on stirring up that unnecessary division back then, and he was pushing the same tired neocon attacks at CPAC. And then, when he saw me coming through the hall, the guy literally turned and ran the other way. It was pathetic and telling.

Matt and Mercedes Schlapp still put on a strong event. The exhibition hall was active. I made new friends, reconnected with people I only knew online, and left recharged. Sure, other conservative conferences are growing. Someone could eventually knock CPAC off its perch. But right now it remains the standard bearer. The people calling it a failure weren’t there. That’s just noise from the sidelines. I was there. The movement is alive. The fight is far from over.

That’s the real story – not the media spin.

The Real Divisions Inside Trump’s Fragile 2024 Coalition

The divisions inside the coalition that elected Trump in 2024 are real – I’m not going to sugarcoat that. But from every conversation I had on the floor at CPAC, they haven’t hit the average voter nearly as hard as the online crowd wants you to believe. This thing is multifaceted, and I saw it up close because I talked to damn near everyone I ran into.

People feel this pressure to pick sides, like you have to choose Laura Loomer and Mike Levin or you’re with Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. That’s wrong. Forcing loyalties to personalities you only know through a screen – Catturd, Candace Owens, whoever – is the same two-sided coin in my book. It turns conservatives into fanboys instead of thinkers. But when I sat down with people in person, their views were way more nuanced than the internet makes it seem. They weren’t locked into tribes. They were thinking it through.

One thing was crystal clear across the board: nobody wants boots on the ground. The split comes on whether they’d back the President if he decided to put Marines on Kharg Island to shut down Iran’s oil exports. For me, that’s a real concern. I don’t want to risk American troops. But it would not make me break with the man who gave me my life back. His first official act as the 47th President was my pardon. I trusted him with my actual freedom – I’m not turning on him now. And the overwhelming majority of people I spoke with felt the exact same way. They’d prefer we don’t put our guys in harm’s way, but their loyalty to Trump holds.

What surprised me most? Almost everyone was happy. Happy that Kamala Harris is not President. That includes the groypers everyone loves to demonize – I’ll have more to say about them in a minute. These are people who love their country. Yes, the coalition is fragile and a little ragtag, but the internet is deceptive as hell. There wasn’t some massive rift tearing us apart. People were concerned about Iran, concerned about the direction, but they were also hopeful and overall damn happy with where things stand.

The one thing every single person I met agreed on – and I mean not one exception – was that Congress has done absolutely nothing. That’s dangerous for the midterms. They refused to pass the SAVE Act. They haven’t codified a single one of Trump’s executive orders. They get on TV and brag about how hard they’re working, while Lindsey Graham is at Disney World playing with kids’ toys. He probably used the fucker on himself that night. And another congressman got caught in a casino in Las Vegas. If we lose the midterms, we have only one body to blame: Article I of the Constitution. Congress.

That frustration with Washington is real, and it’s shared by everyone from the old guard to the new voices. But it also showed me the coalition is still holding – concerned, yes, but not broken.

That conversation about the home front naturally led me into the international side of things.

The International Crowd – What I Found Out from the Iranians, Brazilians, Venezuelans, and Cubans

For the first time in all my years at CPAC, the foreign delegations felt massive. They’re usually there, but this year the international crowd was everywhere you looked.

Trump’s recent moves have zeroed in on three countries-Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba-so I started there.

The Iranian flags were insane. You couldn’t walk ten feet without seeing one. That had everything to do with Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. He drew one of the biggest crowds I’ve seen at CPAC outside of the President himself in past years. The guy is extremely well-spoken, and he clearly has the best intentions for the Iranian people. He seems perfectly positioned to be a strong international partner for the United States. I’m no foreign-policy expert, but I’ve been around long enough to remember the old problems. Is it possible for the Prince to actually rise to power in Iran? Hard to say-the IRGC is still a powerful, ruthless entity. But in the micro-environment of CPAC, he would have won unanimously. I hope the Iranian people finally get their freedom. I just pray it happens without a single American service member coming home in a flag-draped coffin. Let the Iranian people rise up and do what must be done. That’s how real liberty sticks.

From Iran we move to Venezuela. The flawless nighttime operation that snatched Maduro changed the laws of warfare forever. It gave the Venezuelan people at least a real shot at deciding their own future, and as a bonus we got the Reds out of the Western Hemisphere-somewhere they never belonged in the first place. I had the pleasure of sitting down with an aspiring presidential candidate named Eduardo Bittar. I haven’t done a deep dive on his full record yet, but we had a long, detailed conversation about what a free Venezuela could look like. He came across as bright, young, and energetic-a guy who could be a solid partner for the United States in South America. I’m not endorsing him here; I’m just telling you what I saw in person. I’m already scheduling him for a show soon so we can dig into his views properly.

Now to something that hits close to home for me. As a first-generation Cuban-American, I’ve dreamed my whole life of seeing a Cuba Libre. President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio have been crystal clear with the dictator family and President Daz-Canel: exile or end up like Maduro. There were a lot of my Cuban brethren at CPAC, and we spent hours talking about what a free Cuba would actually look like. These conversations ran long because I know the politics and the day-to-day reality on the island inside and out. We all landed in the same place: not a single American dollar should touch that island until the Castros and Daz-Canel are gone for good. Only then does Cuba get to become another strong U.S. partner. No half-measures.

Last, I caught up with Eduardo Bolsonaro again after many years. We talked about his father’s recent hospital stay. I told him straight up that I’m praying for his family’s health and for success in the coming election. He invited me down for election week in Brazil so I can be there to celebrate when one of my biggest heroes in South America-Jair Bolsonaro-gets freed and reunited with his family. Flvio Bolsonaro is the clear favorite to win. So Brazil… te vejo em outubro! At breve!

All those conversations with the international crowd showed me something bigger about where this movement is headed. But the most eye-opening conversation I had the entire time in Grapevine was the one with the so-called “scary groypers.” That might be the most important part of the whole article – because it forced me to seriously rethink who the future of the party actually belongs to.

Who Does the Future of the Party Belong To?

This was the most alarming conversation I had at CPAC. Not alarming for me. It will be alarming for the old guard, for the business-as-usual conservatives, and especially for the neocons. But first, let me give you a little background from my own experience with movements.

It started for me back in 2007 with Ron Paul. That movement gave birth to the Tea Party. I helped start one of the first Tea Party clubs in Miami in 2010. That wave produced some real patriots who put freedom over neocon wars and fiscal irresponsibility. It forced people to stop seeing Republicans as the party of ultra-wealthy corporate shills. Then around 2013-14, right after the midterms, the establishment hijacked it. The people who suddenly “claimed” to be Tea Party took it over, and the rest of us were politically homeless again.

Until Donald Trump stepped into the ring with his America First agenda and the MAGA movement. The Tea Party OGs finally had a new home to fight for constitutional values. Now, ten years later, it’s happening again. People like James Lindsay and Mark Levin want to hijack something a lot of us have built. Movements evolve. They get new names, but the core values don’t just remain – they go deeper.

So where do these “groypers” fit into the equation? The word “groyper” gets thrown around like some kind of insult for anyone who doesn’t self-identify as one. Let me call them what they really are: young Republicans and college Republicans. The longest, most robust conversation I had at CPAC was with them. Some self-identify as groypers, some don’t. But every single one shared the exact same ideology.

They don’t want us involved in foreign wars. They want a strict America First foreign and domestic policy. They’re very centered in their views and they are not willing to compromise on them. It reminded me exactly of the humble beginnings of the Tea Party and MAGA movements. And there was a shit ton of them at CPAC. They’re intelligent, sophisticated, and well organized. They’re tired of being left behind and tired of getting played by the ruling class on election day.

This is exactly what it felt like during the early days of the Tea Party and MAGA. Like it or not – complain, bitch, and moan all you want – they are the future. And personally, I welcome it. I’ve seen this kind of determination before, and it’s older than the Tea Party. Hell, it’s older than all of us. America was built on rebellion. It’s in our nature and in our DNA.

Loomer, James Lindsay, Mark Levin, Catturd, and Warlord Dilley can scream at the top of their lungs. You can’t insult them – they get stronger. You can’t cancel them – they’re already cancelled. It’s inevitable. Don’t believe me? Just look across college campuses and the younger generation. The signs are there.

I welcome this alarm with open arms. I root for them. Take my words to the bank – this check will cash. The only thing that’s still in question is the name. Will the next evolution still be called America First? Bookmark me.

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