If Donald Trump, Jr. was hoping to get support for a political run he did not receive it at Friday’s Conservative Political Action Conference. The son of the former president was the last speaker of the day, but had to address a room with more empty chairs than he probably expected. There was no attempt to be “socially distant” at CPAC, and it was definitely not “standing room only.”
The conservative crowd did not seem terribly impressed or thrilled with Trump Jr.’s remarks. At one point, when he compared CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter (who he called Brian Slettler) to “Mr. Potato Head,” claiming that everyone makes that comparison (almost no one makes that comparison, except for this guy and a Fox News host), he got enough pushback that he had to try to defend his ugly attack.
Jr. also tried to pull off jokes like, “Liz Cheney is less popular than her father is at a quail hunt,” referring to the former vice president accidentally shooting an acquaintance in the face – in 2006, 15 years ago. There likely were attendees in the room who literally were too young to know what he was talking about. When some groaned he declared, “fact check: true.”
Trump Jr.’s speech was his usual mix of lies, half-truths, and self-victimization, accentuated with a big lie about something incredibly irrelevant: “The Muppets” (no offense meant to any Muppets.)
“This month, this month alone, they’ve banned The Muppets,” Trump Jr. lied, blaming “the radical left” for the cancellation that did not happen.
“Right. I mean, if there’s things that you thought were sort of above cancellation, you would be wrong. There is nothing, the radical left won’t cancel. ”
He was probably referring to Disney +, where almost every Muppet episode can now be seen. Entertainment Weekly reports that two episodes are missing, one because Disney could not secure the rights to the music in an episode, and one because the guest star of that episode is now a convicted sex offender and was “found guilty of possessing child pornography.”
BBC News adds that Disney has added a content warning to the beginning of some episodes over “negative stereotypes.”
That’s not cancelling The Muppets, although Trump’s father has made clear he doesn’t like warning labels on his content either.
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