NEED TO KNOW

• CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp asked if attendees wanted impeachment hearings — the crowd cheered, twice, forcing him to walk it back on stage
• Trump skipped CPAC for the first time in a decade; Vance, Rubio, DeSantis, and Musk were also absent
• The conference opened with empty seats, flat crowd energy, and speakers openly pleading for unity ahead of the midterms

GRAPEVINE, TX (TDR) — The 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference produced its most telling moment not from the podium, but from the audience — when CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp asked if attendees wanted impeachment hearings and the crowd erupted in cheers, forcing him to walk it back, ask again, and get cheered a second time.

CPAC speaker: How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?

Crowd: *cheers*

CPAC speaker: No. That was the wrong answer. Let me try it again... pic.twitter.com/tXAYL7X8aK

— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) March 27, 2026

The big picture: CPAC 2026 was supposed to be a midterm mobilization event. Instead, it became a live diagnostic of how far the MAGA coalition has drifted from its leadership — at a conference that, for the first time in a decade, didn't have Trump in the room to hold it together.

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• Trump skipped CPAC for the first time since 2016, citing a busy schedule amid the ongoing Iran conflict — he spoke Friday at a Saudi-backed investment summit in Miami instead
• Also absent: JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, Elon Musk, and Tucker Carlson — effectively every major figure who would draw the base's most intense loyalty or scrutiny
• Support for U.S. military strikes in Iran has fallen to 35 percent among Americans, down from 37 percent just one week earlier — the fracture showing up in the CPAC room is not an outlier

Why it matters: When the most reliable conservative activists in the country — the ones who pay to attend CPAC — cheer for impeachment hearings at a conference designed to rally them behind the president, that is not a messaging problem. That is a base problem.

• Dozens of seats remained empty inside the conference hall on Thursday; speakers had to actively encourage the audience to engage
• At one point, Mercedes Schlapp had to explicitly prompt the crowd to boo when someone mentioned Joe Biden — a response that would have been automatic a year ago
• Local political consultant Kyle Sills told CNN the environment matched his biggest midterm concern: "There's a lot of bickering and infighting going on"

Driving the news: The Schlapp impeachment moment was not a planned bit — it was a crowd-work attempt that revealed something the stage program was carefully designed to avoid saying out loud.

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• Schlapp asked the crowd if they wanted to see impeachment hearings — the crowd erupted immediately; he responded: "No... that was the wrong answer"
• He tried again — "let's try that again, how many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?" — and the crowd cheered a second time, quieter but unmistakable
• Schlapp deflected with a joke — "can someone bring some coffee out for them?" — but the damage was visible; surrounding speakers laughed awkwardly and waited for the crowd to self-correct
• Schlapp had opened Thursday's session urging unity, warning the crowd that "the Left, the hard Left, the Marxists, the satanists, the communists, they love it when we're all fighting"

What they're saying: The speakers who showed up delivered a careful blend of grievance and unity messaging — with the Iran war conspicuously managed rather than celebrated.

• Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, on stage with Schlapp — vowed "justice" against prosecutors who pursued Trump, including Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Fulton County DA Fani Willis, and warned the crowd: "Everybody's afraid that the next administration, if we don't win, we're going to all be investigated"
• Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, on Republican congressional power — "We have a majority. I think we should take it out for a spin"
• University of Florida law student Shashank Yalamanchi, attending CPAC — told CNN: "We're not united behind a real agenda, united behind real issues that we're pushing to the public. Usually when we do push issues, it's the same old tired thing"
• Rutgers anthropology professor Alex Hinton, writing from the conference floor — described the mood as "a political winter" for Trump, with supporters who "feel he has betrayed America First principles" over the Iran war

Yes, but: CPAC has always been an activist conference, not a representative poll. The attendees who cheered for impeachment may represent the movement's most aggrieved edge — not its median voter. Midterm outcomes are decided by persuadable voters, not CPAC rooms.

• Trump's actual approval among Republicans nationally remains high — the fractures visible at CPAC are loudest among the most ideologically engaged, not the broader GOP coalition
• The conference's empty seats and flat energy may reflect the absence of Trump and other marquee speakers as much as genuine base disillusionment — event dynamics and movement health are not the same thing
• Several speakers, including pro-Trump commentator Benny Johnson, drew genuine enthusiasm from the crowd — the impeachment moment was jarring precisely because it was an exception, not a sustained pattern

Between the lines: The most revealing data point at CPAC 2026 wasn't the crowd cheering for impeachment — it was what the stage program did to avoid that moment happening and couldn't prevent it anyway. The entire conference was built around not saying the Iran war out loud.

• Speaker after speaker glossed over the movement's divisions on Iran, the Epstein files, and internal MAGA conflicts — the program was an exercise in managed avoidance, not genuine engagement
• Trump's absence sent a signal the Schlapps couldn't paper over: the president who built this movement doesn't need it right now — and the movement is starting to feel that
• The Iran war dissent on the right — led by Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others with tens of millions of followers — was not represented on stage, but it was clearly in the room

What's next:

• The CPAC straw poll results will offer a first temperature check on 2028 preferences — including whether Marco Rubio's hawkish profile is gaining or losing ground with the base
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks Friday at the Ronald Reagan Dinner in a high-profile slot that functions as a de facto endorsement signal in the Texas Senate runoff against Sen. John Cornyn
• Republicans must hold both the House and Senate in November to preserve Trump's legislative agenda — the enthusiasm gap visible at CPAC is the backdrop every down-ballot candidate takes home with them
• Steve Bannon, who has criticized the Iran war, is scheduled to speak — his reception will be another data point on where the base's appetite for dissent actually sits

If the most committed conservatives in the country are cheering for impeachment at their own movement's flagship conference — and the president doesn't show up — what, exactly, is CPAC still measuring?

Sources

This report was compiled using information from Irish Star, CNN Politics, The Hill, Washington Examiner, South China Morning Post, KVIA/CNN, and Alternet/The Conversation.

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