Argentine President Javier Milei met former American President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, their first in-person meeting ever and the culmination of a year of mutual support and praise in public.
Both were in Maryland to address the conference – Trump delivering his traditional high-energy speech addressing his ongoing presidential campaign and Milei abandoning his more popular delivery style to issue an hour-long treatise on economic theory. Milei and Trump reportedly met following Trump’s speech, in which Trump took a moment to recognize and celebrate Milei as a “great gentleman” and “fabulous guy.”
Milei published a video on social media on Saturday of the two leaders meeting. “Make Argentina Great Again!” Trump exclaimed, which Milei opted for his campaign slogan, “¡Viva la libertad, carajo!” (“Long live liberty, damn it!”).
The two men greeted each other with a warm hug after Trump concluded his address to the conference, the Argentine newspaper Clarín detailed, as the Village People’s “YMCA” blasted on the speakers. Milei reportedly told Trump that he had been “very generous” to him during his presidential campaign in 2023, adding, “thank you for all the work you did for me.” Milei also described him as a “great president” and reportedly expressed hope that Trump would once again return to the role.
President Trump & President Milei backstage at @CPAC! 🇺🇸🇷 pic.twitter.com/0zewSsz3gk
— Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) February 24, 2024
Clarín described the meeting as “low profile,” speculating that Milei, who had met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken days prior to visiting the greater Washington area, was avoiding the appearance of any interference in the 2024 election or upsetting current President Joe Biden by supporting Trump too vocally.
Milei has vocally supported Trump for years, including before he began pursuing a political career. While still a television commenter and podcaster, Milei defended Trump against libertarian critics, who he called “morons” and “imbeciles” for preferring Biden following the latter’s 2021 inauguration. More recently, in an interview with Tucker Carlson in September, Milei praised Trump as “one of the few who understood fully that the fight is against socialism, it’s against statists, and perfectly understood that the generation of wealth comes from the private sector.”
Trump has returned Milei’s sympathies, praising the Argentine president in public remarks. In an interview with Breitbart News in January, Trump recalled his exchange with Milei following the latter’s presidential victory in November.
“The Argentina guy said the greatest guy in the whole world is Donald Trump. He called me right after he won. I had never spoken to him. He called me to thank me,” Trump narrated. “I said, ‘Oh, why do you want to thank me?’ He said, ‘Your policies paved the way for this.’ He’s got everything. He called me the night he won the election and he thanked me very much—he thanked me profusely. It’s called ‘Make Argentina Great Again.’ He’s got MAGA hats.”
At CPAC, Trump took a moment during his speech to praise Milei as part of a “tremendous group of dignitaries” at the event.
“He’s gotten a lot, he’s a great gentleman. You know he’s MAGA, ‘Make Argentina Great Again,'” Trump joked.
During his speech later in the conference, Milei abstained from making overt political points, instead offering a lecture on “the technical underpinnings” of Marxism, “neo-classical” economics, and other woes. Declaring that, economically, “we are in the best moment in the history of humanity – despite the existence of the state,” Milei offered examples of how state regulations damage the lives of citizens. In one such example, he explained:
Let’s assume we are at the moment when we used candles for light and [New Jersey inventor Thomas] Edison hadn’t arrived yet. Obviously, in the moment that Edison appears with his little lamp, all the chandlers go out of business. Naturally, if we had listened to the interventionists, today, instead of having this beautiful conference with all these lights, we’d still be using candles. This is how socialists ruin our lives.
After a lengthy explanation of economic theory, Milei took a moment to condemn “social justice” and the “murderous agenda,” by which he meant the pro-abortion lobby.
“Social justice is violent and unjust, so it is not social or just or anything like that, it’s an aberration,” he declared. “It is unjust because it demands unequal treatment before the law and the redistribution implied in social justice is to steal from one to give to another – which makes social justice not just violent, but unjust.”
On the “murderous agenda,” Milei observed, crediting former President Richard Nixon and his top diplomatic aide Henry Kissinger, that “Planned Parenthood has more locations than McDonald’s around the world” and claimed that overpopulation concerns are misplaced and the abortion agenda has failed “because today on Earth there are 8 billion people.”
Milei concluded by urging his audience, “don’t let socialism advance. Don’t endorse regulation. Don’t endorse the idea of market failure, don’t allow the advance of the murderous agenda, and don’t be led by the siren song of social justice.”
“I come from a country that bought into all those stupid ideas and from being one of the most affluent countries in the world we are ranked 140,” he lamented. “Therefore, don’t surrender your fight for liberty because, if you don’t fight for your liberty, they will drag you into misery.”
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