The eponymous host of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight aired the first batch of 1/6 (above) footage handed to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) Monday and described the scene as “mostly peaceful chaos,” Semafor reports. 

Meanwhile, according to the report, Fox News appears to be “softening” on its “soft ban” on ex-President Trump. Does Donald J. Trump’s 62%-20% score over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in CPAC’s straw poll have anything to do with that?

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TPAC for Sure

Last week’s Conservative Political Action Conferenec (CPAC) was “all about former President Trump,” political reporter Mara Liasson said on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. Everyone, she said, called it “TPAC.” 

In reporting Trump’s domination of TPAC’s – er, CPAC’s – straw poll of declared and undeclared 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls, Newsweek noted that attendees heckled declared candidate, Nikki Haley, former UN ambassador (in Trump’s administration) and former South Carolina governor. The straw poll:

•Trump (declared): 62%.

•Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (undeclared): 20%,

•Perry Johnson (businessman who declared last Thursday): 5%.

•Haley (declared): 3%.

•Vivek Ramaswamy (declared): 1%.

Elsewhere in the GOP: Larry Hogan, the two-term Republican governor of Maryland who had considered a run for president after he voluntarily stepped down last year says that after giving it “serious consideration” he will not seek the GOP nomination in 2024, The Hill reports. Hogan was among the vocal of not-Trump-supporters. He refused to back the candidate Trump endorsed last year for to replace him as Maryland governor, Dan Cox, who lost by a wide margin to Democrat Wes Moore.

"Right now you have, you know, Trump and DeSantis at the top of the field, they're soaking up all the oxygen, getting all the attention," Hogan told CBS News Face the Nation Sunday. "And then a whole lot of the rest of us in single digits, and the more of them you have the less chance you have for somebody rising up."

Upshot: Whether or not the GOP is Trump’s party, CPAC is now and for the foreseeable future a Trump party. Sure, CPAC’s founder, Matt Schlapp faces more than one accusation of recent sexual misconduct, but that sort of thing has never has never much dissuaded the MAGA wing of the party. 

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