GRAPEVINE, Texas — From the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Donald Trump reminded his most loyal supporters how he differed from presidents of the past.
“It turned out that I was able to stop wars from happening and brought our troops back home,” Trump said as the audience of MAGA faithful clapped. “We got out of these ridiculous, endless wars.”
That was two years ago at CPAC in February 2024, as Trump campaigned to return to the White House.
During his appearance at the annual conference in 2025, the newly sworn-in president declared he hoped his “greatest legacy will be as a peacemaker, not a conqueror.”
This year, as the United States continues its involvement in a month-long war in Iran with no clear end, Trump is skipping the gathering of conservative activists — the first time in a decade he has missed it.
In interviews at Gaylord Texan Resort outside Dallas, where first-time Trump-voting college men roamed the same exhibit hall as boomer women buying bedazzled Trump jackets, the eclectic — and vulnerable — nature of his wide 2024 coalition was on display.
Most expressed a desire for the president to wrap up U.S. involvement in Iran, even those who were supportive of his actions so far. Some said that despite wanting a swift exit, they support Trump’s professed desire to free Iranians from an oppressive regime and trust his ability to handle the situation. Other young voters here were dismayed that a president who ran on ending wars has launched the U.S. into a new one.
Republicans will need all their factions to show up in November if the party hopes to maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
“He ran on ‘no new wars.’ There’s a new war,” said 19-year-old Razi Marshall, who cast his first vote for Trump in 2024 soon after becoming eligible to vote. “He ran on making stuff more affordable. Stuff’s less affordable. So in my life, I would say overall, I’m less than pleased.”
Marshall, a student at the University of Southern California who was raised in Upstate New York, registered as a Republican and grew up with a father who played the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh on the radio. Some of his friends have made dark jokes about getting drafted before they’re old enough to legally buy beer, he said.
“I’m considering not voting” in the midterms, Marshall said. “It’s difficult for me to consider not voting, or even to see the party that I grew up supporting — the party that I voted for last year — not following through on promises. What I really wanted was no new wars, Epstein files, things like that. The other party seems to be more in favor of pushing those through.”
Trump — and his handling of the war — remain popular among most voters who identify as MAGA supporters, polls show. At the same time, some prominent conservatives who have long been seen as speaking for the Trump base have voiced fierce opposition to the war. That includes well-known MAGA commentators including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and also popular podcasters like Joe Rogan and Theo Von, who have been credited with helping Trump win younger, less politically active voters.
“You see a big age split on this,” said Jack Posobiec, another podcaster popular with MAGA supporters. He cited young listeners’ writing into his show opposing the war, while those over 45 are expressing more support for it. He also saw it on display during recent Turning Point events at Arizona State University and Liberty University, where students “were just not on board.”
“Not in a sense that they’re anti-American military or pro-Iran or something, but just that they feel that if this war takes place, it’ll take precedence over their issues,” Posobiec said in an interview.
Posobiec said he believes, however, that there is still plenty of time for the administration to win back war-skeptical voters ahead of the midterms, citing the attack on Venezuela in January that did not cost Trump politically.
Trump’s absence from the multiday summit comes as the president says he is seeking to negotiate an end to the conflict but has also deployed thousands more troops to the Middle East. Some 2,000 people have died in the war so far, according to official counts, including 13 U.S. service members.
Iran, meanwhile, has said it is not engaged in talks with the U.S. and has defied Trump.
A White House official told The Washington Post that Trump couldn’t attend CPAC “due to his schedule,” noting that he is “heavily engaged in the ongoing Iran conflict” and other matters. Trump is scheduled to travel to Miami on Friday to speak at an investment conference backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and he is expected to participate in events in Palm Beach, Florida, over the weekend.
Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, said the people who attend his conference “overwhelmingly trust” Trump. But Schlapp, who served as the White House director of political affairs for President George W. Bush during the early stages of the Iraq War, acknowledged that questions remain about how far the Iran conflict will go.
“There’s an unease over what’s going on in the Middle East, and I think that’s universally felt,” said Schlapp, referencing his meetings with political leaders in Europe on the sidelines of last week’s CPAC meeting in Hungary.
“Nobody likes the idea of having to use the military. The president is obviously very careful and cautious when it comes to these questions.”
At the conference here, Schlapp is welcoming speakers from across the conservative spectrum, including Trump allies vociferously for and against the U.S. involvement in the Iran war. He told The Post he doesn’t tell any of his speakers what they should say from the stage.
In the opening session Thursday, the Rev. Franklin Graham praised what he said was Trump’s stepping up “to protect Israel and the Jewish people from the possibility of what I believe is a nuclear annihilation by a radical Islamic regime.”
In another session, Iranian women told of being shot at during protests, as a group holding Persian flags erupted in chants of “Thank you, Trump!” Mercedes Schlapp, a co-leader at CPAC, said their voices should be elevated, while also acknowledging “the concern in America that this could be prolonged.”
On Friday, attendees are scheduled to hear from conservative voices who have been less supportive of going to war with Iran, including Posobiec and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who hosts the “War Room” talk show.
Some of the criticism from MAGA figures has been tempered in recent days, though, as prominent pro-Trump commentators have begun to come to terms with the likelihood of the president putting ground troops in Iran against their wishes.
Five national surveys released this week — interviewing more than 10,000 Americans — consistently found most Americans oppose the war and disapprove of Trump’s handling of it, a contrast from the conflict’s early days when polls found narrower opposition and more variation.
An Associated Press-NORC poll conducted this week and last found that roughly half of Republicans say Trump has taken the right level of action in Iran, but fewer want to see it go further.
Wearing a Charlie Kirk “Freedom” shirt inside the convention hall, Karen McCrary of Grand Prairie, Texas, said she wants Trump to see through his once-stated goal of installing new leadership in Iran. But she is praying that her 19-year-old grandson, stationed in the Middle East as a military drone operator, stays safe from the danger. She recalls her friends being sent to Vietnam decades ago. Her grandson turns 20 on Friday. “Not even 21,” she said.
Standing by the Generation Zion kiosk inside the CPAC exhibit hall, where the youth-oriented Zionist group sold stickers reading “Hamas Sucks” and “Tucker Carlson Hates Me,” 19-year-old Musa Suriel said he was pleased the conference is providing another forum for people on his side to address “potential misinformation” from some conservative influencers who have expressed skepticism of the U.S. providing military support to Israel.
“Obviously not everyone has to agree that this war is just,” said Suriel, who is involved in Jewish student groups. “Like I was very pro-regime change, and right now it looks like that might not happen. And now I’m kind of getting to the point where, okay, maybe it isn’t worth it as much anymore.”
Suriel, a freshman at Indiana University Bloomington, said he voted for Trump in 2024 but is still working through his political identity. He acknowledged that support for Trump’s administration among young people who aren’t deeply invested in the war’s cause could take a hit “now that it’s hurting their pockets.”
Brigitta Mullican of Rockville, Maryland, walked around CPAC wearing glittery Trump pins on her jacket lapel. She was dismayed that some undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes remain in the U.S. and that the Senate has yet to pass a bill requiring identification to vote. She is supportive of Trump’s decision to go into Iran — “I think our president knows a lot more sensitive information that nobody will ever know” — but is cautiously watching to see if U.S. troops are ultimately stationed on the ground there.
“The state of everything’s awful,” Mullican said. “The only good thing is Trump’s in the White House.”
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