NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. As news stories emerged from New Delhi on Thursday evening, all offering proof of an appalling anti-Muslim pogrom there, 50 or so American conservatives, many in red Make America Great Again hats, filed into a windowless hotel conference room in suburban Maryland to watch a panel discussion called Without Religious Freedom, Whats Left?

The panel was part of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the premier annual gathering of the American right, where Republican senators and representatives mingled with pundits, activists and journalists inside a sprawling convention center outside Washington, D.C.

The urgent plight of Indias Muslims earned only 15 seconds of discussion during the hourlong CPAC panel on religious freedom. The brief mention came when Sam Brownback, the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, described President Donald Trump s visit two days earlier to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He had a great trip there, Brownback said of the president. Thirty-six hours, and in a private meeting with Modi hes going, Look, you gotta take care of the religious freedom business. You got a persecution taking place of a lot of your population here.

But what Brownback did not mention to the CPAC audience was that Trump had publicly praised Modi as a champion of religious freedom during a press conference in New Delhi, despite the Indian prime minister being the leader of a blood-and-soil Hindu nationalist movement that seeks to expel Muslims from India. The ambassador did not mention that, during Trumps visit, at least 42 people were killed as Hindu nationalist mobs roamed the citys streets.

Instead, he moved on to other topics. After the panel concluded, as Brownback walked through the halls of the Gaylord National Conference and Convention Center past groups of college-aged Republicans in oversized suits toward Broadcast Row, where far-right news outlets like Breitbart and the Epoch Times had booths a member of his staff prevented HuffPost from questioning him about Trumps actions in New Delhi.