Bizarre video claiming Trump is the ‘real American samurai’ leaves people baffled after it was shown at CPAC

If you thought that gold Trump statues, refusals to wear a mask in the middle of a global pandemic and doubling down on the debunked voter fraud claims that led to a deadly insurrection were about as peak CPAC as we were going to get, hold up because there’s an astonishing one-minute video here to say “hold my drink”.

The clip was apparently part of a video package shown at the Conservative pro-Trump conference on Friday. It shows Japanese political scientist and “Samurai Futurologist” Gemki Fujii (sometimes transcribed as “Genki Fujii”) waxing lyrical about the former president.

CPAC itself has promoted Fujii’s support of Trump, tweeting on Thursday about his appearance and referring to him as “the last samurai”, directing attendees to visit his booth to hear Fujii’s “view on threat of Chinese communism”.

Vox journalist Aaron Rupar then tweeted the video that was shown during the conference, in which Fujii says: “I respect President Trump and American conservatives. President Trump fought against Chinese communists in order to protect the entire free world. President Trump is a real American samurai.”

He goes on to reference “cancel culture” and suggest there could be a “samurai to samurai alliance” between Japan and the US. It seems unlikely that he’s referring to President Biden here as the American samurai in the analogy, making the whole thing even more bizarre given Trump isn’t really in much of a position to improve international relations now that he’s no longer president.

Over on Twitter, people were pretty baffled by the whole thing, reacting largely in disbelief but calling the video a “must-see” nonetheless.

Fujii has a long history of supporting Trump, in particular as it relates to his stance on China.

Meanwhile, both Ted Cruz and Trump Jr were among the most notable speakers of the day. The Texas senator made light of his disgraced trip to Cancun while citizens struggled through power outages in freezing temperatures, saying: “I gotta say, Orlando [where CPAC is taking place this year] is awesome. It’s not as nice as Cancun. But it’s nice.”

The former president’s son made a slightly less bombastic speech, but still managed to draw criticism for his comments slamming Republicans for “losing gracefully”, reminding us all that his father did absolutely everything but that in the process.

All that and we’re only half way into CPAC! Although that’s most of the highest profile speeches done, with another two days of to go, who knows what they could still have in store.

MORE: Did Ted Cruz really board a flight to Cancun amid Texas power outage?