“Sadly The American Dream Is Dead”: Please Welcome Your Newest Presidential Candidate!

Blusterer, bloviator, and prospective billionaire-in-chief Donald Trump had lots of things to tell us this morning! Let’s review.

After first floating the idea back in 2010, Donald Trump declared on Tuesday that he was running for President of the United States.

“Sadly the American dream is dead,” Trump said as he wound up his announcement speech at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

With his wafer-like hair glistening under the stage lights, Trump promised to bring that dream back to life.

He rambled through a speech full of condemnations of China and Mexican people (“not our friends”), theories about free trade, all the while repeatedly calling America’s current leadership “stupid” compared to the Chinese Communist Party.

“Their leaders are much smarter than our leaders,” he said. “It’s like taking the New England Patriots and Tom Brady and have them play your high school football team. That’s the difference between our leaders and China’s leaders.”

Do we have to take him seriously? Survey says: Yes. For example, according to Rolling Stone:

Trump is widely considered to be an unserious candidate, a man who — despite an incredible amount of resources — is unlikely to secure the GOP nomination, and who is more interested in garnering attention. Still, he could have a measurable impact on the race. As recently as last month, Trump was polling better than several other Republican candidates; if those numbers hold, he could end up on stage at the GOP debates.

Like it or not, we can’t ignore Donald Trump the presidential candidate.

Don’t groan. It’s a good thing! He’s got big plans for us.

He fancies himself a savior of the poor.

Trump said recently that “the people that like me best are poor people and middle-income people. . . The rich people don’t like me.”

“I would save the middle class,” he said. “I know what to do. Our jobs are all being taken out of our country.”

Really, we can’t ignore him, this Truther with a TV show, this talentless, tasteless hack? Indeed we can’t, confirmed the Daily Mail (pretty gleefully) earlier this week:

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has emerged as a clear New Hampshire presidential primary favorite among Republicans, but second place is a statistical dead-heat between three GOP contenders — including unlikely candidate Donald Trump.

A Gravis Insights poll released Tuesday morning shows Bush attracting the support of 21 per cent of Republicans who plan to vote in the February 2016 primary.

Eight points behind at 13 percent are Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. At 12 per cent is Trump, the real estate billionaire who is expected to officially launch his campaign on June 16 in New York City.

WIth a polling margin of error of 4 percentage points, Trump is in the Granite State’s top tier for the first time, and in a statistical tie with Paul and Walker.

NB: Mountain Goats frontman reminds us that “Jeb” is an acronym of the man’s full name, John Ellis Bush, so calling the former Governor “Jeb Bush” is like saying you’re going to withdraw $100 from that “ATM machine.” His campaign clip-art makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it?

Also NB, on the topic of names: Trump once paid tens of thousands of dollars to have a rose named after him. Would a rose by any other name really smell as sweet — even one called “The Donald” or perhaps “You’re Fired”? This calls for an investigation.

Even though I would vote for literally any person or animated anthropomorphized duck named Donald over this guy, the Donald will probably win, because he is exceptionally wealthy and exceedingly shameless and if the 20th century taught us anything it is that there is no God. Under his rule, we will all live in Trumpistan and wannabe intellectuals like me will be sent to televised “Apprentice”-style re-education camps. So it goes.

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