Politics

Wherever you go, there you are, the saying goes. It was a lesson Donald Trump’s Maga faithful may have been reminded of last week when they gathered in a convention center near Dallas for a revival of the president’s political movement, only to find that there was no escape from the problems it faces.

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is usually a place of optimism, if not, triumph. It was on its stage last year that Elon Musk pumped a chainsaw in the air amid his abortive foray into clear cutting government bureaucracy, and where JD Vance named undocumented immigration as the “greatest threat” facing the United States and Europe. Trump is a regular, regaling the audience with lengthy monologues about his accomplishments.

Not this year. For the first time in a decade, the president did not attend, apparently consumed with the war in Iran. In his absence, the audience gathered in a cavernous ballroom heard well-known but less powerful Maga figures debate where their movement was headed. Chief among their concerns is how a president who campaigned on ending wars could find himself mulling a ground invasion of Iran.

“I counseled as loud as possible against doing this in the first place,” said Erik Prince, the former CEO of the Blackwater mercenary group, who predicted that if Trump orders an incursion, “you will see imagery of burning American warships in the next couple of weeks. And I don’t think people are really prepared for that.”