General
Trump’s Allies Go Global: ‘Make Argentina Great Again’
At its international conferences, CPAC is giving a stage to right-wing politicians and hunting for ideas for use back home.
From a distance, Alejo de Gennaro would have fit in at any Trump rally. He wore a MAGA hat and a wide smile as he listened to a parade of speakers slam socialists and decry wokeness.
But the text on Mr. Gennaro’s hat revealed a key distinction: “Make Argentina Great Again,” it read. And Mr. Gennaro, a 23-year-old marketing consultant, was standing in the Buenos Aires Hilton, more than 4,000 miles from the nation that had just elected Donald J. Trump.
He and nearly 2,000 others were drawn to the hotel conference room by the Conservative Political Action Conference, a fixture in the United States that has long handed a megaphone to leaders of the American right.
Now, drafting on the right’s momentum worldwide, CPAC has gone global, aiming to unite right-wing parties and politicians in its traveling showcase. In recent years, the group has held conferences in Brazil, Hungary, Japan, Mexico and, this week, Argentina, where speakers included Javier Milei, the country’s libertarian, budget-slashing president, and Lara Trump, the American president-elect’s daughter in-law and the co-chair of the Republican National Committee.
“We’re taking our countries back,” Ms. Trump told the crowd.
In its latest iteration, CPAC is seeking to build something of a political import-export business, seeding Trumpian politics across the globe while also hunting for ideas for use back home and like-minded leaders to amplify.
