Not so long ago, the idea of Donald Trump running for president in 2016 might have seemed farfetched. The billionaire property tycoon with the famously odd hairstyle and a fearsome personality had mooted the idea as far back as the late eighties, but it never got any further than that. Indeed, just prior to the millennium, his popularity was at an all-time low and his chances of running for president, more remote than ever.
Still, it’s amazing what a long-running stint on The Apprentice has done for Trump, with him being named in a recent Gallup Poll as sixth in the top ten most admired men and women living. However, it would be ill advised to attribute his running for the 2016 Republican president candidate purely to his celebrity status.
Trump is no stranger to making political gaffes. Among his more infamous ones are the suggestion Mexico should pay for a wall to be built between it and the USA, labelling all Mexican immigrants “criminals and rapists” and arguing John McCain is not a war hero.
Yet despite the controversy surrounding many of his comments, what he stands for has resonated with some and he has emerged as the Republican presidential campaign front-runner. A Fox News poll earlier this month put him in the lead with support from 26% of those polled, his nearest rival Ben Carson received 18%.
If you strip away the rhetoric and the surrounding controversy you find Trump has focused on two key issues, which are important to both Republicans and Democrats alike.
Trump has offered opinions on everything from abortion and his willingness to appoint a Muslim to his cabinet. However, central to his manifesto are his views on the Second Amendment and the ordinary American citizen’s right to bear arms. It is a divisive issue but one at the top of the political agenda.
Trump’s viewpoint is gun bans don’t work, merely penalizing law-abiding gun owners. Instead he lambasts the Obama administration for their lack of focus and calls for a zero tolerance approach to the treatment of violent criminals as a way to reduce gun-related crime.
The other platform he has built his campaign on is immigration reform. Some of his views have been labeled as moronic such as building a wall between the USA and Mexico but with some Americans, rightly or wrongly, blaming immigrants for everything from recession to loss of jobs, his policies have struck a chord.
Trump wants to see a comprehensive overhaul of the way immigrants are treated; mandatory return of all criminal immigrants, stiffer penalties for overstaying a visa and an end to birthright citizenship. He also wants to protect American jobs for American citizens by controlling more rigorously the annual influx of legal immigrants.
In addition, he has also been vocal in his criticism of America’s military support for EU and Asian allies, playing on the country’s isolationist history, and arguing it is Europe’s problem not America’s.
Delivered in his typically bombastic manner he makes for a powerful, if somewhat controversial political player. People may not like him or his regular political blunders, but they have kept him firmly in the limelight and at the front of the Republican candidate race.
As a UK resident, the gaffes and indiscretions of UK politicians rarely stretch further than the odd off-camera remark or being caught eating food in an undignified manner, so Donald Trump’s antics and remarks would likely prove campaign-killing in the UK. The only serious political personality who would offer any such comparison to Trump, would be Nigel Farage of UKIP, whose party, although growing, offers very little in terms of political substance or an effective manifesto.
Simon Brisk is a UK based business owner with a flair for current affairs, business, marketing and all things sport.
