Address at CPAC 2018 – Feb. 22, 2018

Good morning, CPAC!

Good morning, you guys. I love seeing all of you people here. I love seeing the youth here.

I want to thank ACU. I want to thank everybody at CPAC for making this possible every single year. Because this is the time when we fellowship, we make those connections, we exchange ideas and we realize that we've really taken some ownership.

I just want to say really quickly—this past election has proven more than anything that we are the big tent party. We are the big tent party.

You have to think—this last election we have been able to pull stalwart Democrats away from Hillary Clinton because they got tired of hearing about how they were going to afford their health care premiums and pay for the roof over their head with pronouns and which bathroom they could use. That's what they were told all throughout the election.

And if anything, what this last election has proven to us is that your 80% friend does not have to be your 20% enemy. We learned that this past election.

We are conservatives. We have the superior product. We don't have to modify our views. We don't have to rationalize why we believe what we believe. We don't need, we don't need platitudes and red meat because we have the superior product, the proven superior product.

We saw this with tax reform, did we not? You cannot lie to people about what's in their 401k. You can't lie to them about what's in their paycheck—although the media tries to, they try very hard to do that.

I want to say one more thing about the conservative movement, then we're going to have a little conversation about last night.

We don't need to look for the next conservative Messiah, because that spirit, that spirit, that fire that was in Buckley, that fire that was in Reagan is in each and every one of us. We, we are the power of this movement, and my dear friend and late mentor once said that if you can't sell liberty you suck. And that's true.

So let's have a conversation about last night, shall we? Because the conservative movement, we've been so incredibly successful. We saw that when we expanded the tent. We saw that when we took over social media.

And statists had to innovate to outsmart us, or try to outsmart us. They had to change their algorithms to suppress our speech on social media platforms. They try to ignore us and they try to change Google rankings because we are a voice that they can no longer ignore. And try as they might to spin it, they are unsuccessful and they have been.

Now I'm gonna say something that some people are going to say is controversial, so I'll say it really slowly so all the people on the platform in the back can hear me loud and clear.

Many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys would love it.

Now I'm not saying that you love the tragedy, but I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media in the back.

And notice I said crying white mothers, because there are thousands of grieving black mothers in Chicago every weekend and you don't see town halls for them, do you? Where's the CNN town hall for Chicago? Where's the CNN town hall for sanctuary cities?

Where was the CNN town hall for Jamiel Shaw, Sr., whose son was murdered by someone who illegally entered the country and had been deported repeatedly? Where was his voice?

Where was the voice of those Junior ROTC members last night, CNN? If it bleeds, it leads, doesn't it?

And I don't mean to ignore you all here, but I really, I'm really looking at a lot of the legacy media back there on the platform, and you can write whatever you want about me and you can come find me in the hallways and you can scream at me and you can try to confront me, but I'm here. We're here. We're not going anywhere. I call BS.

If it bleeds, it leads. But it has to be the right people from the right communities at the right time.

Let me, let me just explain something to you all. I think it was insane that I was the hardest questioner on the Broward County Sheriff last night. How is that possible?

Washington Navy Yard. Garland, Texas. Fort Hood. Charleston. Boston. San Bernardino. Orlando. Parkland. Do you know what all of these mass tragedy incidents involved? FBI dropped the ball. They dropped the ball.

Now, I'm allergic to universal statements, just like I'm allergic to people who think Green Day is punk. But let me just be clear—in Charleston, this murderer was able to pass a background check even though he was a prohibited possessor, because as former FBI director James Comey said, they made a mistake. It was a paperwork error.

Sutherland Springs—this mass murderer was able to go and mow down a church because why? The Air Force did not report his conviction, the fact that he was mentally unstable, to the NIC system….

Which, by the way, the organization that I represent, five million plus members, average everyday Americans, moms and dads, they do the school run, they go to the grocery store, they're students, they're hunters, they're, they're people like me who simply don't want to be assaulted in the parking lot if I go to the grocery store and get a gallon of milk at night.

They are people like us and we will not be gas-lighted into thinking that we're responsible for a tragedy that we had nothing to do with. It is not our job to follow up on red flags. It is not our job to make sure that states are reporting to the background check system. It is not our job.

A failure of law enforcement is not a failure of the law. It is a failure of enforcement.

Now if all of those in the legacy media are arguing for the NRA to give us the authority and the resources to go and follow up on these red flag events, I'll volunteer right here now to do it. We have resources available at anyone's disposal if they want to reinforce their schools.

But I'll say it again loud and clear—we're parents, too. And I believe as the millions of members that make up the NRA and I think millions of people just in the United States in general. Don't you think our kids deserve the same protection as our celebrities? Don't you all think that our kids deserve the same protection as our athletes, as our banks, as our as our businesses? But yet we leave them the most unprotected.

My condemnation is for those at the FBI—I know there's some good agents there—but for those at the FBI who dropped the ball eight separate times with catastrophic consequences.

You know, James Comey, when he wasn't busy taking directions from Loretta Lynch as to what to call Hillary Clinton's investigation or writing his self-aggrandizing memoirs, you know he said they made a mistake. Maybe if you politicized your agency less and did your job more we wouldn't have these problems.

I want to make this super obvious point—the government has proven that they cannot keep you safe and yet some people want all of us to disarm. You heard that town hall last night. They cheered the confiscation of firearms, and it was over 5,000 people. I had to have a security detail to get out. I wouldn't been able to exit that if I did not have a private security detail. There were people rushing the stage and screaming "burn her." And I came there to talk solutions and I still I'm going to continue that conversation on solutions as the NRA has been doing for before I was alive.

But the government can't keep you safe, and some people want us to give up our firearms and rely solely upon the protection of the same government that's already failed us numerous times to keep us safe.

And then they also call Trump a tyrant but then say that they want the President to also confiscate our firearms. Try to figure that one out.

You know, after the Parkland tragedy, media was rushing to identify who this person was, and Politico ran a headline that said a white nationalist said he's one of us. Here's a message for people in the legacy media, many of you, not all but a lot of you—don't trust white nationalists. Don't use them as sources. Don't trust them. Senator Byrd's legacy lives on, I guess.

If you take anything from my remarks to you today—and I say this to the reporters in the media, I say this to the people at Slate and the Salon and Think Progress and Media Matters and the people who we keep clothed and fed because their beats are us, right, that's some job creation—I want you to all ask yourselves, where are the stories about how only 38 states submit less than 80% of criminal convictions to the background check system? It's only as good as what's submitted to it. How many of you knew that?

Now, why isn't Diane Feinstein calling for that? I have to question whether or not they want this system to fail? Where are those headlines? Where are those headlines? Where are the headlines?

And you know, by the way, do you realize that that's, those are millions of people who have been adjudicated mentally unfit or criminally dangerous that are able right now to go and purchase a firearm because the politicians who are giving the most lip service about it have done the least about this. They could change this tomorrow. They could change it today. But they won't, because they're exploiting a tragedy for an agenda. Shame on you. We call BS.

Where are the stories about how…here's the stat for you—from 1950 to July of 2016, 98.4% of mass shootings have taken place in gun-free zones. That's a fact. You guys are welcome to go… it's all online. I mean there's this thing called Google. It's maybe the same place that you found the white nationalists to quote for your political headline, but you know, just be careful about your sources. Fake news and all you know.

One of the things that you saw in this video before I came out, because a lot of people have been asking what I'm going to do next, I—God bless America that I can stay in in Dallas, Texas, and God bless America that I'm able to join a group of people at the NRA and NRATV to bring you an hour-long program every day beginning in March, no commercial breaks. None. We're going to show the media how f-sking is done. And fisk those in the legacy media that insist on ignoring the real headlines, that insist on ignoring what is the cause of tragedy.

You know I was sitting on that stage with the Broward County Sheriff and the toughest question, I was asking this man, "How did you fail 39 times?" They had a law enforcement go to this murderer's house 39 times. He was caught taking bullets and knives in a backpack to his school. He had threatened repeatedly to shoot up his school. He was out there in plain sight using his name on social media accounts, sending messages to students that violated a Florida State statute that meant that that sheriff could have gone to his house that night and had him involuntarily committed. Why didn't he? Why didn't you, Sheriff? That's not the NRA's job. That's yours.

I'm joining NRATV and I'm really excited about bringing you stories that matter.

And by the way, if anybody at Slate or New York Times or anyone else needs a refresher on what Fisk means, I'll be at the NRATV booth later on this afternoon.

And by the way, we can also explain to you what Anglo-Saxon heritage also means in the discussion of law enforcement and sheriffs and all of that, because I know that was a big, a big obstacle for a lot of people in media, too.

All right, so I don't, I do not want to cut into the Vice President's time, so I'm gonna leave you with a couple of points of advice here.

Always remember, always—and especially for you younger awesome activists who are the future of our movement—politics is downstream from pop culture. If it happens, it's going to happen in culture first before it happens in policy. Remember that. A very good friend of mine said that, a mentor of mine, God rest his soul.

Never ever ever compromise your principles, ever. It is your job to change hearts and minds, not the government.

A free people have the right to criticize and hold accountable our free press.

We are free. We are conservative. Our principles are proven. And to anybody out there who says that conservatism is dead, I declare here and now that we are just getting started and it will be you who is left in the dustbin of history.

God bless you all. God bless the Second Amendment. Have a great week.