Welcome to Politics Weekly Extra. I'm Jonathan Friedland. This week, the news moves once

again to one of its favorite topics in America, namely Donald Trump. That's because there

is the big, tribal gathering of the Republican right. CPAC, the Conservative Political Action

Conference is meeting in Florida and the star guests, so we are told, is going to be none

other than the former president. The talk is that he's going to anoint himself at that

conference as the nominee for 2024, almost putting a marker down, daring anyone else

to challenge him. A lot of Republicans, I'm sure, will stop for and say that. It's great,

but there will be a group who will say no way that this is not what they want and that

this is cannot be the future for the Republican Party. That group of dissident, disaffected

Republicans took some form earlier this month when word emerge of a Zoom call featuring

a whole lot of disenchanted, disaffected, anti-Trump Republicans. And the convener of that group

was a man called Evan McMullen. Significance of him is that he ran for president against

Trump in effect in 2016 as an independent Conservative. He made quite a few waves back

in 2016 partly because he did very well in his home state of Utah, getting 25% of the

vote, which was by the standards of most third party candidates really high. He did well

there partly because he is from Utah. He's a mormon like a lot of the state's population

and elected representatives. And in a way you could have thought that was that, that he

would be an interesting footnote to the 2016 campaign. But he's back in the news partly

because earlier in February he convened on Zoom a group of disaffected disenchanted Republicans

to talk about next moves where now. And that word of that meeting leaked and there was

a lot of talk about perhaps a new party for those disaffected anti-Trump Republicans. I've

been wanting for a while certainly since that Zoom meeting came to light to talk to Evan

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