NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — Mercedes Schlapp, a White House communications aide and the wife of American Conservative Union (ACU) chairman Matt Schlapp, told Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel in an exclusive interview here at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that President Donald Trump’s CPAC speech was “solid, hardcore, and raw.”
“We get to read the remarks ahead of time so it was just so phenomenal when he just literally threw the papers aside, threw the TelePrompter aside and said let me just talk from the heart to my people,” Schlapp said on Saturday when asked for her response to the president’s speech. “It was like you were sitting down and having family dinner with the greatest guy. Really, he touched upon every single issue that matters to conservatives and the fact that President Trump has delivered. He’s so results-oriented when it comes on the economic side of things, pushing hard on immigration despite the fact that Democrats don’t want to do anything on that end and that they’re pushing on this illegal immigration agenda protecting the illegal immigrant over American citizens, and just continuing talking about getting out of the Paris Climate Accord, where we are in Iran, putting more sanctions on North Korea. It just solid, hardcore, and raw, and it is what we saw with President Trump and of course when he gave his whole spiel about his hair I got tell you it was so charming I got to love it. I loved it.”
Schlapp noted that President Trump’s speech was a call to arms for conservative movement leaders across the country ahead of the all-important 2018 midterm elections in November.
“I think it’s very clear that the president now being here in Washington for a year has realized that the only way to get anything done in Washington is that you got to have more of your kind—which is more Republicans, in fact more conservatives preferably because the moderate Republicans have been a disservice to the conservative movement and to pushing forward the president’s agenda,” she said. “The president realizes at this point, I mean look he has seen the fact that when he is able to mobilize the people, the base, they are able to come out in support and change elections. We saw this in 2016 when no one, very few people, had faith this man would get elected. He wins this miraculous election, is able to be incredibly productive in his first year and is saying ‘we need to win in 2018.’ Why? Because if we lose the House, if we lose the Senate, Republicans lose the House or the Senate—they’re imperfect creatures as well—the president’s agenda will stop, will halt. It will be about investigation after investigation. That, I tell you, will be disruptive to what the president and his vision he wants to propose for the American people. We are on the verge of changing the course of history because of President Trump.”
Schlapp added that the conservative movement needs to be strong and unified for Republicans to win and thereby stop the resistance-driven Democrat insurgency.
“It’s critical, and I think Sebastian Gorka said it today where it’s about a political revolution,” Schlapp said. “Conservative values will die—our country will die—if young people and old people alike, if Americans don’t come out and fight for this nation. If we don’t continue talking about America First, American exceptionalism, assimilating into our culture—and what does this culture mean? It means freedom. It means Democracy. It means the ability to have debate and discussion. It means pushing forward what our Founding Fathers wanted, which is that of individualism and empowerment and growth of the individual—and guess what? The stabilization and growth of families. Something that we’ve seen is families broken down and what’s coming in place of these families? Government? Is that what we want? That’s what President Trump is saying: We don’t need government in the lives of Americans. You are strong enough. We can come together as a community. We can come together as a nation, but remember it’s about red, white, and blue, standing for that flag and loving this country first.”
She also spoke of how President Trump believes in strong conservative women and has them throughout his administration whether it be herself, or White House communications director Hope Hicks, or press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, or White House counselor KellyAnne Conway, or Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, or United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.
“I love how the Democrats play the identity politics card. I think it fails miserably. The question is as women, including with KellyAnne Conway, you look at the Cabinet with Secretary [Elaine] Chao, Nikki Haley, you could go down the list, they are strong women and they are voices in this administration,” Schlapp said. “What I hate is when the Democrats say ‘oh, we are the voice of women.’ I’m sorry, they are not and never will be the voice of conservative women. What they don’t understand is we are pro-life, we are pro-family, we believe in and love our country, and we want to ensure we have safe schools, safe communities, secure that damn border, end sanctuary cities, let’s make sure that we’re protecting American citizens as opposed to dealing with criminal illegal aliens coming into our country, dealing with MS-13s that are impacting communities. I mean, it is so clear to me why President Trump is such a strong advocate for women and partly it is because he has strong women there but also it is because he listens to us which is critical.”
Schlapp also said President Trump demonstrated to CPAC, the beating heart of the conservative movement, that he is a man who has followed through on what he promised on the campaign trail during his year plus in office.
“Let’s think about it: He is a businessman from New York,” Schlapp said. “When you think about it from just a practical standpoint it’s like how can this guy be a conservative? When he picked Mike Pence to be his running mate, then the conservatives were like okay, this is a good first step. Then when it’s when he started picking his staff in office he really has surrounded himself with conservatives in many good ways. Now, of course, there’s a mix of opinions but at the end of the day there are a number of individuals who understand conservative policies in a way—and his gut reaction when I listen to him, when I talk to him, is conservative. The difference is [clear] with the politicians that have been constantly the talkers. There are a lot of talkers in this town, we know that, the difference with President Trump is he is a doer. He is an executor. He gets the job done. And he gets very frustrated when Congress has slow-walked him. He doesn’t have his people in this administration. Guess who is running those shops? The bureaucracy. And Congress needs to act on these nominations.”
LISTEN TO WHITE HOUSE’S MERCEDES SCHLAPP ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY AT CPAC: