OXON HILL, Md. — Former President Donald Trump on Saturday framed the 2024 GOP primary as a fight between populist conservatives like himself and the self-interested Republican establishment, telling a gathering of national conservatives that either he wins the presidential election or the country will be lost.
“This is the final battle,” Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference near the nation’s capital, in what has traditionally been a major campaign stop for GOP candidates seeking the party’s presidential nomination. “They know it, I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. This is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.”
Trump — whose speech reiterated the repeatedly disproven accusation that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — did not mention by name the man seen as his chief rival for the Republican nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But he did criticize GOP officials who, he says, want to raise the Social Security retirement age and cut Medicare.
