Trump brings more madness to US presidential race

On June 16, billionaire Donald Trump formally announced his bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, ending years of speculation that the U.S. real estate mogul and TV reality star would one day enter politics. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

It hasn't taken long for Donald Trump's entry into the American presidential race to have the expected effect. While Trump continues to say he is a serious candidate for the presidency, his pronouncements on the affairs of the country are being greeted with ridicule in some quarters and rage in others. Most of us are just scratching our heads and wondering what he's up to now.

Trump's announcement that he would, yet again, vie for the Republican nomination to be the party's presidential candidate was welcomed by the Democrats. They know a good joke when they see one, and one report says they're "jumping with glee" at the prospect of having Trump – who has a history of making outlandish statements – as an adversary in the debates leading up to the election next year. This won't actually happen, of course. The Republicans also know that Trump is a gadfly and will never make him their official standard-bearer. He will likely not file the formal papers necessary to actually become a candidate and is probably just using the run-up to the party's nomination process for one of his favorite pastimes: the aggrandizement of Donald Trump.

He's very rich, according to himself, but his actions as a candidate haven't done him any financial favors so far. His ill-considered announcement rhetoric aimed at Mexicans last week has generated a firestorm of protest. The smuggling of people across the long common border of the United States and Mexico has been a thorny issue for years, to the point at which a wall has been erected along the border in some parts of the U.S. in an attempt to cut down on undocumented crossings and human trafficking. Trump claims he would do better. In his speech he said, "Nobody can build a fence like me. I would build a wall like nobody can build a wall. And nobody comes in illegally anymore. I would have Mexico pay for it. Believe me. They will pay for it because they have really ripped this country off."

The line about ripping the U.S. off was bad enough, but he didn't stop there. The Donald, as he's sometimes known, went on to say, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with them. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." He tried to temper his comments slightly by saying he assumes some Mexicans are good people. It was too little and too late.