Mona Charen, the conservative columnist who called out Republicans who back accused sexual harassers like President Donald Trump and Roy Moore at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, said that the experience was an encouraging one.
Charen faced audible boos and jeers from the crowd at CPAC on Saturday when she criticized Trump and Moore, but she says she’s also seen an outpouring of support since speaking up about the way GOP leaders have treated sexual misconduct among prominent candidates.
“There are fewer and fewer people who are speaking up. Even I was getting depressed and demoralized,” she said Monday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “But since I said what I did, there’s been such an outpouring of support that I feel more than ever that people who are — who adhere to basic principles of dignity and integrity and belief that we should stand up for honesty, there are a lot of them out there, and they just need a little encouragement, I think.”
After she left the CPAC stage, she was approached by security guard and escorted out of the venue, Charen told “Morning Joe.” However, she said that on her way out, she did see some CPAC attendees give her “the thumbs up.”
Charen lamented the general embrace of Trump in the Republican party.
“There’s a tone of sort of sophomoric clownishness that’s creeped into conservatism now,” she said. “There’s this mood of trolling the opposition, that if you can create liberal tears, then anything goes.”
She noted that CPAC invited the granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right political party.
“What was the point of inviting her? It was again to create a response, to jab a needle in the eye of liberals. They think it’s a game; it’s not. It’s not a game,” Charen said.
