In the days leading up to this week’s opening of CPAC, the nation’s oldest conservative political convention, organizers still seemed to be holding out hope that some brighter MAGA luminary would agree to headline the event. The CPAC app and social media accounts offered a slow drip of news of newly confirmed speakers. There was the HUD secretary, a low-level HHS official, and a Nigerian lawyer who advocates for Christians in his Muslim country. On March 21, CPAC excitedly announced that Todd Chrisley would be joining the lineup.

Who?

You could be forgiven for not knowing about Chrisley. A minor reality TV star, Chrisley was in prison until May last year, serving a 12-year sentence for bank and tax fraud, when President Donald Trump pardoned him. What Chrisley has to offer the CPAC audience is unclear. “To speak on the process of receiving a pardon?” posited one incredulous Facebook commenter responding to the Chrisley announcement.

During the Trump decade, CPAC had been a showcase for the MAGA faithful, and Trump and his family were its biggest stars. Trump himself first appeared at the event in 2011 when he was toying with a presidential run. He hasn’t missed the event in a decade. “Nobody can deny that [CPAC] is the center of political gravity,” CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp told me in 2022.

But the center of gravity has clearly tilted if the modest crowd in the convention hall at the Gaylord Texan resort in Grapevine is any indication. “It’s shitty,” Warner Kimo Sutton told me of the turnout. “Last time this place was packed.” A GOP stalwart who who ran Trump’s 2016 campaign in Hawaii, he was here two years ago, the last time CPAC came to Dallas. He was still hoping more stars would show up. “I’ve heard the widow is coming,” he whispered, saying he had it on good authority that Erika Kirk, the widow of the murdered Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, might be making a surprise appearance.

Whether a late showing by “the widow” is enough to spice up the convention remains to be seen. After all, people book hotels and buy tickets months in advance, often expecting to see Trump and some of his famous children. CPAC doesn’t discourage this view. Trump’s previous appearances feature prominently on the CPAC website. But as of Thursday night, not a single Trump family member was on the 2026 lineup, and Trump has reportedly said he is not coming. (A CPAC intern on Thursday held out hope and told Sutton and me that Trump’s visits........

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