Matt Schlapp, hailing from Wichita, Kansas, has been serving as the Chairman of the American Conservative Union, the organization behind CPAC, since 2014. He is also a Fox News contributor. Mr Schlapp travelled to Budapest, Hungary to announce CPAC Hungary 2025, which will take place on 29–30 May this year, along with Center for Fundamental Rights Director General Miklós Szánthó. After their joint press conference, Mr Schlapp was also kind enough to answer additional questions from a panel of three journalists, including one from our site, Hungarian Conservative.
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How do you view Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election?
Only one other time in American history has a president come back and recaptured the White House after losing it, but never before had the issues been so stark. And for most of our CPAC supporters, they believe that America would have run its course if Donald Trump had lost. I mean, the socialists have embedded themselves in the corporations, in the boards of directors of these corporations, and they’ve grabbed control of the bureaucracy, which we now refer to as ‘the deep state’. They’ve taken over churches, they’ve taken over universities, they’ve taken over the nonprofits, they’ve taken over everything. And mostly with our money, while we’re donating and paying taxes. And most Americans were in a little bit of a stupor about how radicalized everything had become.
And then the socialists overplayed their hands. They were just too aggressive in pushing trans ideology on children. They were too aggressive by opening up the border and letting millions of criminals into our country. They were too aggressive in these cities, which are just cesspools, disgusting cesspools. They’re not anything like they were ten years ago. The American people finally realized what was going on.
I will also say, as I said at the press conference, when I go around and do these CPACS—we just came back from Japan and we just came back from Argentina—, everybody is so happy that Donald Trump won. I mean, it has inspired hope all over the world.
What role did the CPAC and CPAC Hungary play in the global collaboration of the conservative forces?
I’m very proud of the work we do at CPAC, but I also want to be humble about the fact that a lot of people did a lot of great things. I’ll just say some facts, and then you can say how good we were.
In the case of Donald Trump, we were with him in 2016. We were with him for all four years of his first term. We were with him after 6 January. We invited him to speak on our stage just a couple of weeks after 6 January, when they called him an ‘insurrectionist’ and an election denier, tried to take all his money, tried to put him in jail. We’ve never stepped away from him, we’ve always stood by him. We did that because we knew that he was a historic leader and we needed his voice. My belief is that CPAC as an organization is having a very influential role in a lot of very important countries at the same time. And I think we have a real momentum around the globe to have freedom-loving candidates win in a lot more important countries. I felt discouraged that the world got to the point where there were only a couple of good leaders. We had a point when there was Orbán and Trump. That was it. Now we have Giorgia Meloni, and now we have Javier Milei, and, you know, it’s growing. At the same time that those people are winning, I think the left is getting more and more aggressive in their tactics. So it’s the time to win.
Which countries do you expect to be the next one to experience a surge in conservatism this year?
Well, I don’t know how the calendar plays out this year. We’ll go to Brazil. We’ll potentially go to South Korea, we’ll go to Japan, and obviously, we’ll come back here to Hungary. I was just in Poland. They’re very interested in doing a CPAC in Poland, which I think could have a positive impact from what I can see. If you’re in European politics, it’d be nice if Prime Minister Orbán had more allies in the EU.
So you see a real chance for having a CPAC in Poland?
I think there’s a chance, a really good chance.
In a huge Catholic country?
Yes, a huge Catholic country that has a real affinity towards America because there’s a huge Polish population in America, and they supported Trump in the last election. So I see a lot of affinity between the two countries. And we’re talking to other countries too.
Look, the issues are the same. When you go to all these countries, it is out-of-control illegal migration. It is the idea that fossil fuels are evil and that we are all going to run our lives with windmills. And by the way, they don’t like nuclear power either, right? This idea that our kids can select their genders and mutilate their bodies at tender ages is insane. This idea that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist is also insane. They just went too far.
In America, it took a really dangerous turn on this, everything being about race, everything in America became about race. And if you were white, you were not allowed to speak. What happened in Australia is that CPAC in Australia fought this effort called ‘The Voice’, which would have given darker-skinned people enhanced constitutional rights. We had something similar in America, it’s called Black Lives Matter, that if you were black, you got the job, because, in generations past, someone in your family was a slave. I have news for them. Slavery has been in every aspect of society forever. And there are more slaves today than there were at the time of our Civil War. But they have my country so wrapped up in this idea that because you had slavery you can never repair that sin. And that’s ridiculous; in every other country, when they make a mistake, they try to fix it and they move on. They don’t want us to move on. They want us to stay stuck hating each other. I’m so proud of more black voters turning towards Trump and saying: ‘I don’t hate people because of race. And by the way, I’d like to have a good job and maybe I’d like to have gas and food not cost so much money.’ There’s a practical nature to all this too.
Do you think that Donald Trump’s second term will bring more than just a political, but a cultural change too? The views he holds that the mainstream media tried to paint as fringe now have to be accepted as pretty centrist views, for example, on immigration and transgenderism. Do you think that is the case?
Yeah, the greatest thing about Donald Trump’s victory is that it was completely based on issues. Matter of fact, some people believed his personality, this aggressive, very big personality was more of a negative than a positive. I don’t know if I agree with that, but some people say that. But you can’t deny that he won on all these issues. He defended cops. He doesn’t want to use the American military to be the world’s policeman or start new wars overseas. He wants to fight antisemitism in America. He wants to bring back a merit-based economy and society. He signed executive orders against affirmative action, which is a very important thing.
He’s getting rid of affirmative action in America, which means that if you’re a racial minority, you get a leg up over somebody who’s not. Or if you’re LGBTQ, you get a leg up over somebody who’s not. He’s doing it, and at the same time, he got record numbers of supporters from those communities. So even the minority communities, the gay community or whatever box you’re talking about, whatever group in society, they voted for Donald Trump in greater numbers, because they know this is an insane way to run a country. The Hispanic movement was amazing. Now you can look at exit polls—I’m not sure how exact they are, in my opinion. But there’s no question that Hispanic voters, Asian voters, and minority voters supported President Trump in increasing numbers. Look, it’s their neighbourhoods that are crime-infested because of the open border, right? They waited in line to come to America legally, and then all these other people got to come illegally. I mean, it makes them crazy.
Do you think President Trump will be more mellow in his second term than in his first one?
This is the conundrum of Donald Trump. He is a very rational person. He really thinks about his words. He really thinks about how to say things. He thinks about these nicknames he gives to others.
But he wants to push the envelope, always push the envelope. So he’ll keep people guessing on that. It’ll seem like, well, he seems calmer. He understands the job. He’ll be more measured, and then he’ll try to razz people with his language. It’s one of the reasons why he’s a fascinating person to know and a fascinating politician.
I have a question about CPAC. Do you think that the global or the American left has something similar?
No.
So conservatives have an advantage in that?
You know, it’s kind of funny. In America, they’re going to put on a conference of moderate to liberal Republicans at the same time as CPAC. So basically Republicans who hate Trump are going to do a conference during our conference, and it’ll be very small. So, it’s kind of silly, but I wonder why the left in America doesn’t have a conference like this. I don’t know if the left has a conference like this in Europe. In South America, they do have something similar. I think it’s called the São Paulo Forum.
But one of the things in America that drives the left crazy is they hate CPAC. They try to lie about us every year. When we go into our event next month, the media will be horrid, terrible. They’re trying to do everything to turn us into a scandal machine so they can get rid of us. We’re not going anywhere, it’s not going to work. I wish they would just focus on having their own event. Why are they trying to destroy ours? Just go have your own event. By the way, if they had their own event, I wouldn’t try to destroy it. I’d just kind of go on vacation or something. I guess I would ignore it.
And about President Trump and Prime Minister Orbán’s relationship. President Trump has talked a lot about Viktor Orbán, quite unprecedented that a presidential candidate would bring up a foreign leader that much in his campaign. Do you think that helped him with the American voter?
You know, it’s interesting because I don’t know what the number of Hungarians are in America. I know a lot of people obviously fled from Hungary when the hard times were here. I think if you had brought up Viktor Orbán ten years ago, I think hardly anybody would have known who he was. When we invited him to speak at CPAC in Dallas—by the way, he gave a great speech, he’s such a thoughtful person—, there was an editorial in The Washington Post attacking me for allowing him to speak because they said he’s a fascist and a dictator, all these lies.
Today I think he’s fairly well known. So yes, I think it had a positive impact. It’s also all the lies that they’ve tried to spread about him, they seem to have washed away. That doesn’t mean they like him, doesn’t mean they like his policies, but they can’t smear him as easily as they tried to do at the beginning. And I think he’s a very shrewd politician. I think he understands the need to ‘sell Hungary’, and I think he’s done a very good job with that. Matter of fact, I have donors and friends that are saying, you know: ‘I should get property in Hungary.’ It’s a beautiful country, it’s well run. You only have one thing against you. They can’t figure out your language.
There’s no property tax here. Did you know that?
I did not know that. People really admire your tax policy generally, I think.
I feel really positive about the relationship that we forged between our two countries and with the Center. I think history is going to show that those were good decisions, so I’m proud of that.
President Trump has achieved even before taking office what President Biden could not achieve in 15 months, the truce in Gaza. What can this mean for the war in Ukraine?
I’m very optimistic that they are going to come to a ceasefire. You know, it was Viktor Orbán who tried to get the ceasefire immediately, and Biden didn’t want to deal with him. I think that was tragic. Not only have we spent a lot of American money, but so many young Ukrainians are dead as well because they wanted to wage this war. I think they should have tried a ceasefire immediately—that’s what Donald Trump wanted, and that’s what Viktor Orbán wanted. I don’t know what the war has accomplished. I’m hopeful that it can come to an end, I think it would be fantastic for the people of Europe if they could make this stop.
And, you know, I’m just dubious of Zelenskyy. I think it’s disrespectful to the American people to keep showing up in his war fatigues. He doesn’t show up in a suit. And I don’t know how he travels so much. He’s everywhere! He’s at every award ceremony, every world leader event, he’s always there. I would just say if I was fighting a war in my country I would be in that country, I wouldn’t be leaving. That’s very odd to me, and I think it’s odd to the American people. It doesn’t make sense, if you’re in a war, you have to be there waging war. The American people have looked at Joe Biden’s policy, and they couldn’t tell what it was. Other than giving them money, for what some people would say is a just cause, there was never a military strategy to win. And the American people don’t want to fund things that don’t have a strategy to win. I think that is another reason why Donald Trump won.
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