What to expect from Trump’s CPAC speech

Former president expected to focus on IVF controversy in Saturday appearance

When former president Donald Trump takes to the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, expect him to use the prime time appearance to clean up the Alabama Supreme Court’s mess.

Mr Trump, who has previously bragged about his role in “terminating” the federal right to legal abortion, is set to speak at the annual right-wing confab just days after the Yellowhammer State’s highest court essentially outlawed in-vitro fertilisation in a shock ruling that led the state’s IVF clinics to shutter their doors.

The ruling and its aftermath have sent shockwaves through Republican candidates at the state and federal levels, who have struggled to deal with Democratic enthusiasm as a result of the backlash to the federal Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned the half-century-old Roe v Wade ruling which had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.

But the ex-president appeared to give his party direction on Friday when he took to Truth Social to stress his support for “the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families” and “fertility treatments like IVF in every State in America”.

“Like the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Americans, including the VAST MAJORITY of Republicans, Conservatives, Christians, and Pro-Life Americans, I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,” he wrote.

He added that the GOP “should always be on the side of the Miracle of Life – and the side of Mothers, Fathers, and their Beautiful Babies” and called IVF “an important part of that”.

The former president is also likely to spend significant portions of his speech railing against the various prosecutors who are preparing to try him in a series of criminal cases across four separate jurisdictions.

He will almost certainly target specifically Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, who his defence team has been trying to discredit by claiming that her personal relationship with another prosecutor amounts to a conflict of interest that requires her office to be booted from the felony racketeering and election interference case against him.

And he’ll likely lash out against New York State Attorney General Letitia James — the woman whose office obtained a nearly half-billion dollar judgment against him and his companies for defrauding a series of New York-based banks.

Mr Trump’s rhetoric will largely match what attendees at CPAC have heard from speakers over the prior three days, nearly all of whom have used their time on stage to denounce President Joe Biden, accusing him of “weaponising” the government against Mr Trump and his supporters and call for an end to US aid to Ukraine.

One should also expect the twice-impeached ex-president to renew his invective against Mr Biden’s immigration and border policies and praise the harsh measures being taken by Texas governor Greg Abbott and other Republican governors against non-white migrants who enter the US along the country’s southern border.