Three years ago on Saturday, on 16 June 2015, at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Donald Trump descended a gold-plated escalator and announced his run for president. He flashed a thumbs up to a fawning crowd, some of whom had reportedly been paid $50 to be there.
Trump laid out his vision for the country: a screed the media largely wrote off as the implausible musings of a man whose only chance of living on Pennsylvania Avenue would come from the Trump hotel – which was then a building site.
Trump promised to be the “greatest jobs president that God ever created”, then accused Mexico of sending to the US drug traffickers, criminals and rapists. He promised to build a wall along the southern border and to end Barack Obama’s shielding from deportation of millions of undocumented migrants.
Three years later, on immigration at least, President Trump is working double-time to make that vision reality.
Here’s a look back at some of the news coverage from the day Trump launched his campaign. Some of it now seems prescient. Some seems comically wrong.
The Washington Post
The business mogul, who has never held public office, enters an extremely crowded field of Republican presidential hopefuls, now numbering a dozen major candidates. And it remains to be seen how he will distinguish himself from his rivals on policy issues, in part because he’s steered clear of many policy specifics: last month, he raised eyebrows when he said he had a “foolproof plan” to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group, but refused to reveal details because ‘I don’t want the enemy to know what I’m doing’.
The report included a mocking comment from the Democratic National Committee that has not aged particularly well:
Today, Donald Trump became the second major Republican candidate to announce for president in two days. He adds some much-needed seriousness that has previously been lacking from the GOP field, and we look forward to hearing more about his ideas for the nation.”
New York Times
Donald J Trump, the garrulous real estate developer whose name has adorned apartment buildings, hotels, Trump-brand neckties and Trump-brand steaks, announced on Tuesday his entry into the 2016 presidential race, brandishing his wealth and fame as chief qualifications in an improbable quest for the Republican nomination.
It seems a remote prospect that Republicans, stung in 2012 by the caricature of their nominee, Mitt Romney, as…
