"The party apparatus from the state and local level to the national level has pretty much remained in control of Trump loyalists," Evan Siegfried, a Republican strategist and commentator, told
GOP Civil War Barely Registers at Conservative Conference Where Trump Will Speak
On 2/21/21 at 11:11 AM EST
The 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference, which kicks off Thursday, appears to remain aligned behind Donald Trump, even as leading Republicans have condemned and clashed publicly with the former president.
The roster of speakers for CPAC 2021 features Trump who will deliver his first big speech since leaving the White House and a slate of other politicians and pundits who are supportive of him. Although analysts have described tensions within the Republican Party as a civil war, Trump s GOP critics won t be given a platform to share their perspective during the event, which takes place in Orlando, Florida, from February 25 to 28.
Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said Saturday that her vote to impeach was "compelled by the oath I swore to the Constitution."
Image from: Samuel Corum | Getty Images
Some clever sleuthing from ProPublica and Gizmodo turned up a post by Joel Valdez, an aide to Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, actively cheering on the protesters at the U.S. Capitol as they overran the police. A video by Valdez was posted to the now-defunct Parler.
Because Parler did not scrub metadata from media, precise information such as location and time was included on everything on the site, making things relatively easy for law enforcement and others looking at Parler.
And while Gaetz would later try to baselessly blame the riot on Antifa, some have speculated that he was one of the Republicans giving out location information to the rioters, which might explain his aide s enthusiasm.