CPAC speaker criticizes attendees for supporting ‘brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism’

Conservative author Mona Charen said Sunday she welcomed the crowd’s negative response to her comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, in which she criticized Republicans for embracing President Trump, Roy Moore and others.

“There is nothing more freeing than telling the truth. And it must be done, again and again, by those of us who refuse to be absorbed into this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism, by those of us who refuse to overlook the fools, frauds and fascists attempting to glide along in his slipstream into respectability,” Charen wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.

Charen spoke Saturday at CPAC on a panel focused on feminism and sexual abuse amid the recent #MeToo movement. Charen ripped the Republican Party for supporting politicians who are accused of sexual misconduct “because he happens to have an ‘R’ after his name.”

“I am disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women,” Charen said, a likely reference to a video of Trump released during his presidential campaign in which he bragged about grabbing women.

{mosads}“This is a party that endorsed Roy Moore for the Senate in the state of Alabama even though he was a credibly accused child molester. You cannot claim that you stand for women and put up with that,” Charen said. 

The crowd booed her, and security guards escorted her out of the room after the panel, Politico reported.

Charen, who worked for the Reagan administration and former GOP Rep. Jack Kemp (N.Y.), wrote Sunday that many lifelong Republicans no longer feel welcome in the GOP. Instead, she said, CPAC invited speakers who align with Trump’s views, such as controversial ex-sheriff David Clarke Jr. and French far-right politician Marion Maréchal-Le Pen.

Trump also spoke at the event, giving what at times mirrored a campaign speech, featuring attacks on his political rivals and a “lock her up” chant at the mention of his former Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

“For traditional conservatives, the past two years have felt like a Twilight Zone episode,” Charen wrote. “Politicians, activists and intellectuals have succumbed with numbing regularity, betraying every principle they once claimed to uphold. But there remains a vigorous remnant of dissenters.”