As the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) kicks off this week, CPAC Senior Fellow Mercedes Schlapp has pointed to a growing international movement of MAGA-aligned groups and touted the conference’s ability to shape the movement by debuting its up-and-coming keynote figures.

“And so I really feel that CPAC, I think really Matt [Schlapp] just has an eye for it,” she said on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “He sees where the movement is going. He knows what we need to do to expand this movement, and it's why… we're seeing this movement expand and basically explode internationally, where we have foreign leaders coming to speak at CPAC. We have delegations from different countries representing the conservative movement in these different countries coming to CPAC because they want to basically be inspired by what has been created here with The MAGA movement.”

CPAC has increasingly attracted international figures to its gatherings, notably drawing Argentinian President Javier Milei as a speaker last year as well as Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele.

Beginning on Thursday, the conference will run through the weekend and feature many of the movement’s heavy hitters, including both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Schlapp pointed to the conference’s history of inviting contentious speakers, many of whom have since become MAGA mainstays. She further noted that her husband, Matt Schlapp, “really took a lot of heat from his own board members who were telling him to disinvite the president during that 2021 election following, you know, that time frame after j6.”

“And I thought that was a very critical moment for President Trump, during that speech that he gave, and knowing that he was still loved by so many of us that we were not going to give up and that we were going to keep fighting for him,” she continued. “And look what he's been able to do like we've been through such dark times in our movement during those four years, not only the MAGA movement, but just America in general.”

Among the conference’s most contentious of prior speakers were now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Both previously spoke at CPAC before their alignment with the Republicans and eventually found their ways into the Cabinet.

“We love discovering or unraveling these superstars. And I think for Tulsi Gabbard, it was a conversation that Matt had with Tulsi that Matt was saying, ‘Well, you know, I have a lot of people mad at me because I invited you.’ And Tulsi said, ‘Yeah, I have a lot of people mad at me too.’”

“Look at where we are today, really, truly, where she understood that her party had abandoned her, that her party turned on her, that her party basically called her a traitor and a Russian asset,” Schlapp said of Gabbard. “I mean, how disgusting is that for someone who has served our country honorably and is just a brilliant woman and just someone who I respect greatly, and I'm so glad that President Trump picked her for DNI and to head that agency.”

“And also I want to add Robert F Kennedy, Jr.,” she added. “That's right, we invited him to speak at CPAC to just a smaller group of our investors. And even some of our big investors were saying, ‘I don't know. I don't like this. I don't think I want to meet him.’ And then he spoke to the group and and he literally, they were like, ‘Okay, I don't agree with him on climate change, but I can agree with him and all these other things.’”