7:41 AM: Remember I said never to miss morning prayers at CPAC? People I missed yesterday by being late and leaving early: Wayne LaPierre, Mike Pence and Eric Trump. As I publish today, if you are a general ticket holder, it’s already standing room only, an hour before the pledge to God and country.

If you followed my live blog or my twitter feed you know that I spent most of the day in the press pen reporting #CPAC2018. I also spent a little time blocking people on Twitter who decided I must be a conservative activist who needed a talking to, and who insisted on addressing me as “lady” and “cupcake,” and suggesting I perform various unnatural acts on them.

Blogging hasn’t been this interesting since the Duke Lacrosse case.

The last session of the day that I attended was a rousing keynote by Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire that brought the young crowd to its feet repeatedly. One standing O was when Shapiro asked audience members to raise their hands if they cared about the students killed in Parkland Florida last week. Thousands of hands shot into the air. “And how many of you care about the Second Amendment?” Shapiro demanded. The same hands shot into the air.

“See, members of the media?” Shapiro thundered at those of us in a makeshift press room behind metal fences at the back of the room. “Both of these things are true!” Then, as if he had thrown a switch, the crowd turned around and began to boo, cat call and shout at us. What was a little surreal, other than the fact that this was actually happening, was that probably only about a third of us were not conservative media, so it had more of the feel of an activity than of a spontaneous demonstration. Nevertheless, the intern from the Washington Examiner sitting next to me was freaked. “I’ve always been on the other side of that fence,” he said. “This is so weird.”

For the rest of this live blog, published at Public Seminar on February 23, 2018, go here.