As we enter a new year, have you lost track of how many people/groups that presidential hopeful Donald Trump insulted in 2015?
An entertaining highlight reel of Trumpisms (see clip below) puts the number at 68, although the Washington Post, which created the video, may have missed a few or left some out. It’s also hard to remember all of insults hurled by the candidate.
A separate compilation has been put together by The Wrap .
It seems like a million years ago, rather than July 2015, when the GOP presidential front-runner claimed that U.S. Senator John McCain (a POW during the Vietnam conflict imprisoned at the so-called Hanoi Hilton) wasn’t a war hero, and just about everyone thought Trump’s campaign would implode. Conventional wisdom then was the Trump White House bid was done, over.
But Trump, a candidate who has vowed to make America great again, has defied and seemingly rewritten all the usual political rules and — assuming all the polls are accurate — seems to have gained electoral strength and market share as the consistent GOP front-runner, despite making one outrageous or divisive statement after another.
According to the Real Clear Politics poll average, Donald Trump — a former Democrat and Independent who is not popular with the so-called GOP establishment or with liberals, but is receiving support from what used to be called Reagan Democrats — maintains a double-digit lead with grassroots voters over his nearest Republican rivals for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, although Cruz currently has a 2.8 percent lead over Trump in Iowa .
Among other things, Trump has promised to build a “beautiful” wall at the U.S.-Mexican border and bring back manufacturing jobs from overseas.
Some polling data now suggests that the billionaire real estate mogul would defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election, assuming both win their party’s nomination
“Trump has let loose on both Democrats and Republicans, rival candidates, lawmakers, journalists and even pop culture icons,” The Hillreported in July, in a listingof the politically incorrect New York businessman’s notable insults to that point.
Based on the Post video, Donald Trump directed much of his ridicule to “low energy” Jeb Bush, “schlonged” Hillary Clinton (“the worst Secretary of State in history”), and the “dishonest” mainstream liberal media.
The Trump outreach effort is also active on social media , where the ex- Celebrity Apprentice star has 5.5 million Twitter followers.
“ POLITICO examined thousands of Trump’s tweets from mid-July through mid-December — 3,249 tweets and retweets, to be exact. What we found is a tug of war between the Manhattan mogul’s famous ego and his equally infamous id: bragging about his poll numbers, crowd sizes, and TV ratings in one moment, then viciously attacking his rivals and critics the next… His most frequent target? Jeb Bush. Trump went after the former Florida governor 97 times, compared to 65 hits on Hillary Clinton and 49 on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.”
Commenting on Donald Trump’s freewheeling dialogue as he continues to top the polls, The Wrap observed that, “In short, Trump’s list of insults is longer than a J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy. Whether or not he wins the Republican presidential nomination, the real-estate mogul has already proven he’s got staying power, turning the Republican primary race upside down and leaving veteran pundits scratching their heads as they try to explain his unexplainable rise in the polls.”
According to a telephone survey compiled in late December by Columbus Ohio-based Clout Research, 45 percent of Hispanic voters and 40 percent of African-American voters intend to vote for Donald Trump for president, in addition to the support he currently receives from other demographic groups.
What do you think the over/under is on how many people Donald Trump will insult on the way to the GOP presidential nomination and possibly the presidency in 2016?
[Photo by Nati Harnik/AP]