On March 2, 2019, President Donald Trump gave a controversial speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The conference is made up of conservative activists and elected officials from all over the country. It ran for four days. Trump’s two-plus hour speech took on everything from the Mueller investigation to the viability of wind as a power source.

Notably, about 10 minutes into his speech, Trump went completely off script, explaining, “You know, I’m totally off script right now. And this is how I got elected, by being off script. True. And if we don’t go off script, our country is in big trouble, folks.” He referenced this several times throughout the speech.

One talking point was the recently proposed Green New Deal. Trump expressed a generally disfavorable attitude towards it. An explanation he gave for this was the unreliability of wind energy. He stated that “[w]hen the wind stops blowing, that is the end of your electric. Let’s hurry up. ‘Darling, darling, is the wind blowing today? I would like to watch television, darling. ”’ However, this is not how the Green New Deal plans to function.

Trump also attacked the Mueller investigation. He implied that the 13-person commission was not fair, and that conflicts of interest existed between him and Mueller. Trump explained, “[Mueller] wanted the job as FBI director. I did not give it to him. Why isn’t that mentioned?” He further elaborated on his distaste for the 13-person committee, mentioning that they were all Democrats.

Trump concluded by addressing his summit with Kim Jong-un in Vietnam. He said that it was not possible to have come to a deal. He said, “I had to walk, because every once in a while, you have to walk. Because the deal wasn’t a deal that was acceptable to me.” Trump also remarked on Otto Warmbier, the American student who was detained by North Korea, sent home unresponsive, and then died shortly afterwards. Trump expressed the difficulties of negotiating, while also remembering the pain the Warmbier family went through.

Some HHS students did not like the way Trump presented himself, believing that, while Trump’s two hour speech covered a lot of information, its messages were undercut by his rhetoric. Senior Eleanor Smith said “I would just say that the general way he behaves is incredibly unprofessional.” Some criticized Trump’s speech for including several expletives in reference to Clinton election aides and the the Mueller investigation. An anonymous student also stated, “I would never imagine the president of the United States to be so inconsiderate.”