Astonishing rise: Trump’s wild year
Republican front-runner has defied political norms with controversial barbs
In the six months since announcing his run for president, Donald Trump has defied political gravity, seeing his popularity among Republicans rise despite — or because of — a steady flow of provocative policies and barbs that would sink most traditional politicians. For the billionaire developer, what has not killed his candidacy has made it only stronger.
Here is a look back at Trump’s most memorable moments of 2015. The beginning Political prognosticators thought that Trump was bluffing until he actually said he was running for president. But once he made it official in June, there was no looking back. Trump kicked off his campaign with controversy, making the construction of a wall and the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants a centrepiece of his platform.
“They’re bringing drugs,” Trump said during his announcement. “They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” On heroism Sen. John McCain might no longer be the darling of the Republican Party, but few would question his war hero status after his years of captivity and torture during the Vietnam War. However, at an event for evangelical Christians in Iowa in July, Trump begged to differ.
“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Trump’s White House bid was said to be doomed. A bloody barb After the first Republican presidential debate in August, Trump felt that Megyn Kelly, the Fox News anchor who moderated the event, had treated him unfairly. He ridiculed her on social media that night and later seemed to suggest during an interview with CNN that she had treated him poorly because she was menstruating.
“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,” said Trump, who later said that he was referring to her ears. Facing Fiorina Trump stirred accusations of sexism again in September when Rolling Stone magazine quoted him disparaging the appearance of Carly Fiorina, a rival for the Republican nomination.
“Look at that face!” he said in the interview. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
Fiorina got a brief bounce in the polls after she deftly confronted Trump at the next debate. Blaming Bush Republicans often distance themselves from the legacy of former president George W. Bush, but one thing that remains taboo is blaming him for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Except for Trump. Some Republicans said he sounded like a Democrat in October when he suggested that the attacks were Bush’s fault.
“When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time,” Trump said.
Jeb Bush, a frequent target of Trump’s, defended his brother’s record. Aquestion of faith Under pressure in Iowa, Trump seemed to be looking for ways to turn off evangelical Christians who were becoming enamored with Ben Carson, the soft-spoken retired neurosurgeon. Trump took the religious road, bringing up Carson’s faith as a Seventh-day Adventist and wondering aloud whether Iowans could see themselves supporting him.
“I’m Presbyterian,” Trump said at a rally in Florida in November.
“Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about.”
He went on to regale voters with stories of Carson’s stabbing a friend as a child and accused him of being too tired to be president. But Trump has largely left him alone as his poll numbers have declined. Barring Muslims Trump’s most controversial proposal came in early December when, in the wake of the attacks in Paris and in San Bernardino, California, he announced a plan to bar all foreign Muslims from entering the United States.
The idea was compared to the Chinese Exclusion Act and to Japanese internment camps — some of the darkest blemishes in U.S. history — and critics called Trump a racist and a fascist.
Denouncing political correctness, he said, “Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”
Separately, Trump called for more rigorous surveillance of American Muslims and mosques and insisted that Muslims in New Jersey cheered after attacks of Sept. 11 — a claim that he has been unable to prove.