Former president to claim Republican Party’s political leadership with major appearance at annual CPAC meeting.
Former President Donald Trump returns to the US political stage on Sunday with a highly anticipated speech to Republican grassroots activists at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
“He is the current and future leader of the Republican Party,” said Jason Miller, a top Trump adviser.
“Coming out of Sunday, it’ll be clear he is the one leader that has the vision to move the party forward,” Miller told Al Jazeera.
Trump will sound his “concern with the direction Joe Biden is taking the country” and outline a “broader direction for the Republican Party and the conservative movement”, Miller said.
The theme of this year’s CPAC gathering of Republican activists is “Uncanceled”, a take-off on Facebook and Twitter’s moves to permanently ban Trump. The conference, held every year since 1974, is customarily a place where Republicans jockeying for presidential contention go to gain prominence and solicit support.
“The former president is not going to go away. He likes the attention. He likes the power and the influence,” said Daniel Mallinson, a professor of public policy at Penn State University.
“He clearly has the undying and unwavering support of his followers,” Mallinson said.
Trump is likely to offer up a litany of “first-month failures”, including “the things President Trump warned about on the campaign trail” such as Biden’s easing of restrictions on migrants at the southwest US border and proposal of legislation to Congress to provide a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants living in the US, Miller said.
Trump will also challenge Biden for “capitulating to Iran and China”.
Attacking Biden so soon after leaving office would be a break from US political norms in which ex-presidents generally do not engage in overt criticism of the present officeholder.
“Usually, presidents who lose become elder statesmen. They go away and write books,” said David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline University.
“Trump is unusual in so many ways, of course. He is not fading away. He still wants to make sure the party remains within his grasp,” Schultz told Al Jazeera.