It is Friday morning at America’s largest conservative gathering and speakers talk law and order, religious freedom and small government on the main stage as convention-goers crowd a pinball machine downstairs that makes light of the 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
“J6 Insurrection” — an “educational documentary game” — is one of the hottest attractions among a cornucopia of merchandise available a short escalator ride from the main hall at the four-day Conservative Political Action Conference in the Washington suburbs.
“You’re making America proud,” a tinny Donald Trump can be heard shouting from the game’s speakers as one player uses the flippers to slam the ball into a high-scoring bumper.
“This is a criminal enterprise!” Trump adds later as real-life video footage from the riots is shown above the brightly-colored playing area, mocked up to look like the area in front of Congress where the violence erupted.
The game can be played in several modes with names such as “Fake News,” “Political Prisoners” and “Stop the Steal” that dovetail with the right-wing conspiracy theory that the rioters were set up by the Democratic “Deep State.”
“The intent of this was to trigger people, I guess, and it definitely did that,” says Jon Linowes, a Trump-supporting software developer who came up with the concept.
The New Hampshire entrepreneur, like many at CPAC, believes that the 1,100-plus Trump supporters who were charged for storming Congress to halt the transfer of power to Joe Biden are largely political prisoners.
“I wanted some way that I could bring what I can see is the truth of what actually happened on January 6, versus the popular narrative that you’re seeing in all the media,” he says.
Bottled ‘woke tears’
As right-wing stars draw crowds to the convention center on the banks of the Potomac River, vendors in the indoor marketplace downstairs hawk pictures of Trump as a lion tamer and Joe Biden as a Nazi.
Activists and lobbyists vie for the attention of conference-goers alongside dozens of stallholders selling Trump-themed candy, cigars, T-shirts, games, mugs and coffee table books.
Attendees finding political pinball too taxing can relax with a handful of “Make America Great Again” freeze-dried candy and a bottle of “Woke Tears.”
“We have a proprietary process where we have cubicles inside a warehouse at an undisclosed location and we put a bunch of woke people in each cubicle,” jokes “Woke Tears” founder J.P. Mohr, 25, from southern California.
“And we play Trump speeches on a looping repeat for hours, with a bucket underneath.”
Billed as the “largest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world,” this year’s CPAC comes eight months before the presidential election, with Trump cruising to his third straight Republican nomination and vowing “retribution” on political opponents if he is reelected.
Once a showcase of robust ideas competing for primacy in the conservative movement, the conference has become a demonstration of the ideological transition that Republicans have been through to redraw the party in Trump’s image.
‘Trump is my voice’
Much of the swag on offer highlighted a dichotomy at the heart of Republicans’ view of Biden, who is presented both as criminal mastermind — and as a weak and confused senior, barely competent enough to dress himself.
Up for grabs across the aisle from the bottled water were $20 shirts featuring Biden and his son Hunter with Hitler moustaches alongside the legend “Got Corruption?”
Depictions of Biden as a Nazi also appear on rolls of toilet paper, alongside images of Hillary Clinton peering from behind bars.
Meanwhile Trump grinned from framed prints on sale, looking gallant and presidential, cleaning up the streets alongside a fierce-looking lion sidekick.
Tops emblazoned with Trump’s mugshot from his Georgia racketeering arrest last year were among the popular merchandise — reflecting the grievance Trump and his supporters feel over the four criminal indictments he is facing that he dismisses as a politically-motivated “witch hunt.”
“Trump is my voice. He represents what I think,” said Ana Villalobos, a Salvadoran immigrant from New York who was selling $550 Trump-themed hammocks, lined with golden tassels to represent the former president’s blond hairdo.
“There are some things where I would like him to be different but, you know — we all come as a package.”