00:00We can speak to Todd Belt, a professor and director of the political management program at George Washington University.
00:07Professor, thank you for speaking to Paris Direct.
00:10I mean, maybe some of our international viewers aren't familiar with it, but usually at events like this,
00:18Donald Trump would come out on the last day in previous years.
00:21It would be a big rally for his MAGA movement, for conservatives.
00:26He's not there this year.
00:27Are we reading too much into his absence?
00:31Well, perhaps.
00:33Remember, he's got a war going on, and you can sort of give him some credit for trying to make
00:38sure that he's prosecuting that.
00:40And, you know, showing up for a rally would undermine the seriousness of the war.
00:45But it is that war that is actually the real dividing factor here.
00:50The members of CPAC are there in Texas, and not all of them are happy with the president.
00:55And a Pew poll just recently released showed that the real divide is among men above and under 35 years
01:03old.
01:04People over 35 who identify as MAGA Republicans are still firmly behind the president on the Iran war, and the
01:10ones below 35 are not.
01:12It's a real stark divide, and it is breaking up the Republican Party at a time when they're going into
01:18the midterm elections and they need unity.
01:20Yeah, and for years, Trump has gone to this event, to CPAC, promising his followers that he was no fan
01:26of military action overseas.
01:28And here we are.
01:30The best headline I saw, Professor, coming from the New York Times, it said, quote,
01:34at CPAC, the America First crowd ponders giving war a chance.
01:40Is a war really going to register at midterm elections for voters, though?
01:47Well, here's the thing about the use of force.
01:50Traditionally in U.S. politics, we get what's called the rally around the flag effect, which is the president's popularity
01:56will usually skyrocket with the use of force,
01:59particularly because the media and the other party don't want to undermine the president's credibility or the media.
02:06I'm sorry, the military while they're in harm's way.
02:09But the president didn't prepare anyone for this.
02:12We got, you know, a 2.30 in the morning video of him saying that the hostilities had started.
02:17He didn't prepare the American people and he didn't prepare the international community by building a coalition, which is what
02:24presidents usually do.
02:25And so this really came out of nowhere.
02:27And there doesn't seem to be an endgame to this.
02:29As Colin Powell always used to say, if you go in, you better have a plan for getting out.
02:34And we're hearing a lot of people at CPAC are saying, we don't know what the president's doing.
02:38We don't know what his goals are and we don't know how he's going to get us out of this
02:41after he promised no more forever wars.
02:44Yeah. On Thursday at CPAC, if there was anyone that was split on the war or anti-war,
02:50those voices might have been drowned out by a vocal group of Iranian Americans who have been boisterously celebrating the
02:56U.S. military occupation operation.
02:59The son of the former Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has been making a lot of media appearances in the United States.
03:07But if there is an endgame, and we were often talking about regime change early on in this war and
03:13Reza Pahlavi's name being floated out there as someone who could succeed,
03:17why is the administration or certain conservatives seem to support this man when there's no clear indication that he would
03:25be who could possibly take power in Iran?
03:30Yeah, you're right. There is no sort of any idea that he has the support of the Iranian people.
03:36I mean, his father who was the Shah, that was a long, long time ago.
03:41The Islamic Revolution was in 1979, and it's not clear that he would be popular back there.
03:48But the question is, who is going to be the next one?
03:51Obviously, we have the Venezuela model that the administration is working under with the idea that, you know,
03:58the second in command may be somebody we can do business with.
04:01I think that he's going to be sidelined on this in terms of who we end up making a deal
04:07with and trying to stop the hostilities.
04:10When you say who's going to be the next one, we could also apply that for the MAGA movement.
04:14Donald Trump, this is his second and final term as president, assuming the Constitution isn't altered in some way.
04:20Anyway, is MAGA having any reckoning about what the future of their movement might look like and who will take
04:26up the mantle?
04:29Right now, there's a real break among the CPACers.
04:32Some of them are behind Rubio.
04:34Some of them are behind Vance, neither of whom are scheduled to speak, by the way.
04:37But traditional, you have somebody like Rubio, who is a more traditional interventionist Republican,
04:44who is more closely tied with this war and Venezuela and, of course, the threats against Cuba.
04:50And he has sort of a bunch of the interventionist CPACers are behind him.
04:56And then you have Vance, who now we're hearing was the lone voice of dissent within the cabinet against going
05:04into Venezuela and against the Iran war.
05:06And he may be able to sort of walk that line to try to make sure he gets the president's
05:12supporters,
05:13but at the same time say, I was the voice of reason and was the person who did not want
05:17to get into this war.
05:17Yeah, and yet Vice President J.D. Vance also not present at CPAC, at least not expected to be there
05:24for this final day.
05:26Other people that are not there as well, MAGA Media personalities, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly.
05:32So CPAC has seen a lot of new faces, I guess you could say, this year.
05:37Anyone of note for our international viewers?
05:42None that I've seen yet.
05:44Usually you don't see a whole lot of brand new voices coming out of CPAC.
05:49You might find one or two that then get elevated on the stage when you have the national conventions.
05:56I don't see anybody at this point.
05:58But it's worth noting that the Republicans are talking about maybe doing a midterm convention during the summer.
06:05So stay tuned.
06:07Watch those videos and see if there's anybody who pops out.
06:10They might be elevated to another convention that we might have down the road here.
06:13Professor, thank you very much.
06:15Professor Todd Belt from George Washington University.
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