President Trump speaks at CPAC

By Veronica Stracqualursi, Caroline Kelly and Harmeet Kaur, CNN

Updated 8:13 p.m. ET, March 2, 2019
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3:13 p.m. ET, March 2, 2019

Trump: 'We learned a lot over the last couple of days' about North Korea

President Donald Trump said the US has learned a lot over the last couple of days after the abrupt end of his summit with Kim Jong Un and said again, “I had to walk, because every once in a while, you have to walk.”

He said North Korea had said it was “willing to do much less on the sanction front. But you see, that’s not what happened there. So already I think we’re negotiating.”

Amid the controversy following President Trump saying he took Kim’s word regarding former prisoner Otto Warmbier who died after he came back to the US, Trump said “I’m in such a horrible position. Because in one way I have to negotiate. In the other way, I love Mr. and Mrs. Warmbier. And I love Otto. And it’s a very, very delicate balance.”

On Friday, Warmbier's parents released a statement following Trump's words that he took Kim at his word that he did not know about Warmbier's treatment in a North Korean prison.

"We have been respectful during this summit process. Now we must speak out. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that. Thank you," 

Trump said later Friday his words were "misinterpreted" and that he did hold North Korea responsible for Otto's death just days after he was returned to the US.

3:51 p.m. ET, March 2, 2019

Trump: If you use your power to fire someone, 'it is called obstruction. But only for Trump, nobody else.'

By Veronica Stracqualursi

President Donald Trump pushed back against possible obstruction of justice accusations he could be facing for firing former FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.

His comments came as he was criticizing former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his recusal in the Russia investigation.

“The attorney general recuses himself and I don't fire him. No obstruction. That's the other thing -- If you use your rights, if you use your power, if you use Article Two, it is called obstruction. But only for Trump, for nobody else," Trump said, referring to the special counsel's investigation into whether Trump's removal of Comey was a possible obstruction of justice.

Two days after ousting Comey, Trump told NBC News that he was considering this "Russia thing" before he fired Comey.

3:51 p.m. ET, March 2, 2019

This was Trump's longest speech

By Joe Ruiz

President Donald Trump spoke for 2 hours, 2 minutes and 17 seconds in front of a packed ballroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday. It was the longest speech of his presidency.

2:01 p.m. ET, March 2, 2019

Trump tells CPAC he will sign executive order on campus free speech

President Donald Trump says he’ll be signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech.

“If they want our dollars and we give them by the billions,” Trump said, “they’ve got to allow people to speak.”

The President brought a young man named Hayden Williams on stage to join him at CPAC when he made the announcement. Williams, a conservative activist, was punched on the campus of the University of California Berkeley last month.

“Ladies and gentlemen, he took a hard punch in the face for all of us,” the President said.

He didn’t offer any more details on the order.

From CNN's Nikki Carvajal

2:09 p.m. ET, March 2, 2019

Trump said all of ISIS will be defeated by today or tomorrow. Two days ago, he said the same thing.

From CNN's Nikki Carvajal 

President Trump said Saturday that all of the territory of the ISIS caliphate in Syria has been taken back, despite previously saying something similar just days ago.

“As of today or tomorrow, we will have 100% of the caliphate defeated,” the President told CPAC.

He said his generals told him it would take two years for them to be defeated, but he said that would take too long.

The President said that on his trip to Iraq, he spoke with troops on the ground who told him the mission could be completed more quickly if they attacked from more locations.

“If you gave us permission, we could hit them from the back, from the side, from the base that you’re on right now. They won’t know what the hell hit them. They won’t know what the hell hit them, sir,” Trump said a general named Raisin told him. 

During a stopover in Alaska on Thursday, the President said 100% of the caliphate had been taken. An official of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces disputed that statement, saying that the fight is ongoing and that they were surprised by Trump's statement.

On Friday, the SDF began a ground operation to clear civilians from Baghouz in Syria, the last piece of territory under ISIS' control.

1:06 p.m. ET, March 2, 2019

Fact-checking CPAC

CNN's Holmes Lybrand is fact-checking some of the topics being discussed at CPAC, including abortion, opioids, the Trump tax cut, and the claim that those supporting the Green New Deal want to kill cows.

He's updating as the conference continues.

12:57 p.m. ET, March 2, 2019

Trump mocks Jeff Sessions and goes after Mueller

From CNN's Sarah Westwood

President Donald Trump has gone after special counsel Robert Mueller extensively, even mocking former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ southern accent when recalling Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigation. 

“Robert Mueller never received a vote,” Trump said. “The person that appointed Robert Mueller never received a vote.”

“So the attorney general is weak and ineffective and he doesn’t do what he should’ve done,” Trump said.

He recounted a conversation with first lady Melania Trump he said he had just before he removed former FBI Director James Comey, in which he predicted the firing would be bipartisan because many Democrats had criticized Comey.

Trump had earlier called the investigations into him “bullshit” and said congressional committees are only shifting to scrutinize his business dealings because, he claimed, the forthcoming Mueller report will not confirm collusion. 

1:27 p.m. ET, March 2, 2019

Trump discusses Green New Deal, Russia probe, Clinton's emails

By Caroline Kelly

Trump hit on three key issues early on during his CPAC speech -- and took a shot at House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, calling him 'Shifty Schiff":

The Green New Deal: "I encourage it, I think it's really something that they should promote, they should work hard on. It's something our country needs desperately, they have to go out and get it, but I'll take the other side of the argument only because I'm mandated to. But they should stay with that argument, never change. No planes, no energy, when the wind stops blowing, that's the end of your electric ... Is the wind blowing today? I'd like to watch television."

Asking Russia to get Hillary Clinton's emails: "If you tell a joke, if you're sarcastic, if you're having fun with audience, if you're on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, 'Russia, please if you can, get us Hillary Clinton's emails! Please, Russia, please! Please get us the emails, please!'"

The crowd then broke into a chant of "Lock her up!"

"So everybody's having a good time," he continued. "I'm laughing, we're all having fun, and then that fake CNN and others say, 'he asked Russia to go get the emails.'"

House Democrats' Russian investigation: Republican Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan "fight so hard on this witch hunt, this phony deal that they put together, this phony thing that now looks like it's dying. So they don't have anything with Russia, there is no collusion. So now they go and morph into, let's inspect every deal he's ever done. We're going to go into his finances, we're going to check his deals...These people are sick. I saw little Shifty Schiff yesterday, it's the first time. We went into a meeting and he said, 'we're going to look into his finances.' I said, 'where did that come from?' You always talked about Russia, collusion with Russia, the collusion delusion."

10:23 a.m. ET, March 2, 2019

Here's what Trump said at last year's CPAC

From CNN's Gregory Krieg and Sophie Tatum

Last year's CPAC represented the GOP's full embrace of President Trump.

Trump had gone off-script, discarding prepared remarks he deemed "sort of boring," and touted the success of his administration's first year.

He also addressed other issues like immigration -- at the time, senators had spent months trying to negotiate a compromise for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, multiple deals had failed to pass, and tempers were fraying. At the CPAC speech, Trump lit into Democrats as "totally unresponsive" and "really crazed."

Trump had also called for teachers to be armed in schools in response to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting in Florida, which occurred the week before the conference.

An armed teacher, Trump claimed, would have "shot the hell" out of the Florida killer.

Coincidentally, the President had also announced new sanctions on North Korea at CPAC 2018. One year and two summits later, the sanctions may again come up at CPAC 2019.

Trump walked away from the Hanoi summit empty-handed last week after refusing to lift the sanctions.

Watch Trump's comments at CPAC 2018: