U.S. President Donald Trump and the current leaders of Argentina, Italy and Slovakia are among the figures set to address a three-day meeting of prominent conservatives that began Thursday outside of Washington.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance kicked off the Conservative Political Action Conference, with other sessions Thursday set to include discussions of cryptocurrency and Middle East peace, and a panel featuring relatives of hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas militants.
Vance said he believed the "biggest threat" to countries in Europe was the arrival of "unvetted foreign migrants," and criticized the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden for its handling of immigration and foreign leadership.
He said a prime goal for Trump is to “get the illegal aliens out” of the United States, although Trump’s promised mass deportation of 11 million undocumented migrants living in the U.S. is off to a halting start in the first month of his second term in the White House.
“We can’t rebuild Western civilization by allowing millions of illegal migrants” to enter Western countries, Vance said. “We want borders, we want sovereignty.”
The CPAC conference helped Trump emerge as a figure in conservative politics and one which he addressed every year during his prior term in office.
He used an address last year at the conference to pledge that a victory in the November 2024 presidential election would bring “judgment day” for “the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government.”
In addition to U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, Thursday’s agenda includes remarks from former British Prime Minister Liz Truss and Balazs Orban, the political director for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Santiago Abascal, head of the far-right Spanish political party Vox, is set to address the event Thursday, as is British lawmaker Nigel Farage and former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
Trump’s pick to lead Voice of America, Kari Lake, is scheduled to speak on Friday.
Other scheduled speakers include Argentine President Javier Milei, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press.
