If Thursday morning at CPAC was an opportunity for congressmen, senators, governors and 2016 presidential hopefuls all around to outline their visions for the party, Thursday afternoon was the time for showmen to rant.

Two of the more fiery – and sporadically coherent – speakers, who by now have become regulars on the CPAC roster, unleashed assaults on the media and American society in general in one case (NRA chief Wayne LaPierre), and on whatever happened to be flitting about his head from one second to the next in the other (Donald Trump).

LaPierre’s speech, while always an invigorating affair, took an acid turn from his address last year. In 2013, shortly after the Newtown elementary school massacre, LaPierre felt more of an obligation to make a detailed argument for unlimited gun ownership rights. This year’s address was more goading his enemies. While the National Rifle Association emerged from last year’s gun control battles in Congress victorious, LaPierre didn’t show indication of letting his resentment towards a hostile media go.

“One of America’s greatest threats is a national news media that fails to provide a level playing field for the truth,” he said. “You know how I know the media lies? Because they still call themselves ‘journalists’. The media’s intentional corruption of the truth is an abomination. And NRA members will never, and I mean never, submit or surrender to the national media.”

LaPierre was in a dark place. He described a society that had no trust in anything any more – media, Congress, each other – and in which individuals were under constant threat of attack from seemingly dozens of crimes that he laid out, from “rapers” to “knockout gamers.” He painted a emphatically scary picture of modern society to build up his crescendo: that the only way for individuals to feel secure in these times is to be able to purchase “all the rifles, handguns and shotguns we want.” Bold.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wayne LaPierre takes the praise from the crowd. Photograph: Mike Theiler/Reuters

Following that was a stranger, and, sure, more entertaining affair: Donald Trump.

Trump described how he had just flown in from his renovated golf resort in Florida, which is now “the greatest resort in the country,” and where he’s “created lots of jobs.” He added that he’ll soon be renovating the Old Post Office Building in Washington DC, to make it “the most luxurious hotel in the world.” Creating lots of jobs, too. He announced that unlike most of the CPAC speakers – and, most famously, President Obama – he wouldn’t use a teleprompter.

As is frequently the case when someone chooses to forgo the teleprompter, you soon realize why teleprompters exist in the first place. Trump gave a rambling account of various people he’s met, anecdotes, policy views, and off-the-cuff attacks on other politicians. He used the word “bigly” (as in, “the Chinese are taking our jobs and they’re taking them bigly”) three times and referred to the still-alive 39th president as the “late, great Jimmy Carter.” He described Crimea as where “all the money is” to explain why Putin wants it, after a quick story about how he was in Moscow a few months ago and “Putin even sent me a present, a beautiful present with a beautiful note.”

Trump, who consistently pretends to flirt with the possibility of running for elected office but never pulls the trigger, predicted that Republicans would easily take the Senate in the midterm elections this year. As for 2016? “We’ll probably be running against Hillary [Clinton],” which would be a “difficult race,” but manageable. He wished “the next guy” who’s president luck, though, as he “hears” that 2017 and 2018 will be marked by “economic catastrophe.”

On policy, Trump spoke out strongly against immigration reform with a path to citizenship. “We either have borders or we don’t,” he said. Don’t listen to Senator Marco Rubio, he said “who gets up there and he talks about ‘let everybody in’.” (This is probably not how Marco Rubio would describe his approach to immigration reform.)

“You will not get any of those [Hispanic] votes, no matter what you do,” he warned Republican politicians. “With immigration, you better be smart, and you better be tough, and they’re taking your jobs, and you better be careful.”

And on these two haunting notes, the main program at CPAC called it a day.