Trump is due to launch his re-election campaign Tuesday in Orlando. “But look how wrong that assumption would be.” “I thought, if it was Britain and someone was to come and say all those extreme things, you’d think it was sort of like a far-right, extreme-slash-jokey candidate, and there’s no chance he’s ever going to win this,” Neate said. Neate, who is British, remembers that colleagues at the time didn’t think it was “particularly a big deal”, but recalls then being stunned by the content of Trump’s speech. The Guardian dispatched business reporter Rupert Neate to Trump Tower. “I think everyone just left there shocked,” Haddon said. The speech set a precedent for the freewheeling addresses Trump made throughout his campaign, and has continued to make in the White House. Trump’s initial announcement set a precedent for speeches throughout his campaign and, eventually, his presidency. It was all just sort of spewed out there.” Going from one topic to another, things that might, I guess, excite people, set people off. “It just seemed so stream-of-consciousness. “It was angry but it was also so matter-of-fact,” said Haddon, who now covers business at the Journal. “Definitely the sense was … there’s no way this guy is going to make it,” Haddon said.Īs for the event itself, Haddon remembers there being an “almost pro-wrestling” tone to the announcement. The president likes to insist that 2016 was the first time he had run for office, but as far back as 1988 he had flirted with running, and he ran for the Reform party nomination in 1999. But it was clear immediately afterwards that his talent for getting attention was going to serve him well,” Alter said.įor Heather Haddon, then a political reporter at the Wall Street Journal, one of the surprises was that Trump had finally done it. “I don’t think anybody came away from that announcement thinking he was going to be the next president. But even for close Trump watchers, the speech represented new extremes. In the US, however, he had been waging what many saw as a racist “birther” campaign against Barack Obama for years, falsely claiming the then president had been born in Kenya. Trump was best known internationally for his hair, TV show, and proclaimed wealth. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said, as he claimed the country was dispatching immigrants to the US. I don't think anybody came away from that announcement thinking he was going to be the next president Charlotte Alter Alter, who co-wrote Time’s story with then political correspondent Alex Altman, remembers The Music of the Night, from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, being blasted on repeat while journalists waited for Trump’s descent.īefore the speech, Trump’s fledgling campaign staff had circulated planned remarks, Alter said, but Trump quickly went off script. But at the campaign launch, he took a different tack. So in some ways sending me was … they were kind of throwing me a bone, I think.”Īt Trump’s later campaign rallies he would play music by the Rolling Stones, Queen and Neil Young – each of whom asked him to stop doing so. “I, at the time, was a very junior reporter and I was based in New York. In 2015 she was a junior reporter for Time magazine, keen to get involved in coverage of the presidential election. “There was a lot of just random curiosity happening.”Ĭharlotte Alter was far from a veteran political correspondent when she covered Trump’s launch. “There were some people who lived in the building who had come down, and then there were just a lot of people just kind of from off the street who had come in to see it,” she said. Wise, now a reporting fellow for WAMU radio’s Guns and America project, remembers it being an unusual audience. “We are looking to cast people for the event to wear T-shirts and carry signs and help cheer him in support of his announcement,” read the casting call. In the days following Trump’s announcement, it emerged that the Trump campaign had paid people $50 to attend the event. It was one of my first assignments out of the office.” Wise said: “I was an intern at Reuters at the time. Photograph: Christopher Gregory/Getty Images Donald Trump announces his candidacy on that day in 2015.
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