Former President Donald Trump won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll for the second straight year, with Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis coming in second place.
The CPAC poll found that Trump received 59% and DeSantis received 28%.
For comparison, the CPAC poll in 2021 found that Trump received 55% and DeSantis got 21% support.
In a hypothetical poll that removed Trump’s name as an option, DeSantis finished first with 61.4%, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received 6.3%, and Donald Trump Jr. received 5.9%.
The #CPAC2022 STRAW POLL l is out and among attendees, 2024 is Trump and DeSantis' race to lose pic.twitter.com/ta0kLEyHXQ
— Brittany Shepherd (@brittanys) February 27, 2022
With a hypothetically Trump out of the running, FL GOV RON DESANTIS leads #CPAC2022 straw poll runaway leader, with Pompeo following at a mere 6 pts pic.twitter.com/mvYmgH61M5
— Brittany Shepherd (@brittanys) February 27, 2022
While speaking at CPAC on Saturday, Trump dropped his biggest tease yet that he’ll be running again for the White House in 2024.
In a well-received speech, Trump fired verbal salvos at Joe Biden and his administration amid a growing crisis in Ukraine following an invasion late last week by tens of thousands of Russian troops, while promising to help restore Republicans to power in the November midterms and in 2024.
“The socialists, globalists, Marxists, and communists who are attacking our civilization have no idea of the sleeping giant they have awoken,” Trump said Saturday evening.
“But they’re going to find out the hard way, starting on Nov. 8, and then again, even more so in November 2024, they will find out like never before. We did it twice and we’ll do it again. We’re going to be doing it again a third time,” he vowed.
“The radical Left has tried to replace American democracy with woke tyranny,” Trump said. “Our mission in 2022 and in 2024 is to take on this radical and power-hungry ruling class and to deliver them an electoral defeat.”
“Nobody could ever believe how bad and weak and grossly incompetent it has been, and when you have a weak president who is not respected by other nations, you have a very chaotic world and the world hasn’t been this chaotic since world war. Two. I think we can say that very strongly. I have no doubt that President Putin made his decision after watching that pathetic withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the military take it out,” Trump said, slamming Biden’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Trump also spoke to Fox News during the event about his new Truth Social app that launched.
It came when he was asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to use social media during the war whereas he was removed from Facebook and Twitter.
“There’s death in Ukraine, and he’s able to use the power of very sick people,” he said of the executives in Big Tech. “These are very bad people that control it.”
He said, “what they are doing is so bad for our country.”
“Legal or not, I’m not sure,” he said. “And it gets a lot of people, we will tell you that what they’ve done is terrible, and we’re doing TRUTH Social.”
“Truth,” the 45th President of the United States said. “It’s about the truth and I think it’s going to be very big, and if you look at it now, how well it’s doing—people are amazed—it’s trending like, number one all over the place, and it’s going to be great, and we need it.”
He argued that his new app would give “a voice,” to people who can not say what they want to on other apps.
“Because these people, there’s something wrong with them,” he said. “They’re almost, perhaps, they’re sick. Perhaps they’re deranged.”
“It’s a disgrace,” the former president said. “And you know, I had hundreds of millions of people, but I think that TRUTHSocial is going to be a way of getting out our voice.”
“It’s going to be very powerful,” he said and he confirmed, “I’ll be using it. Yeah. I’ll be using it.”
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