Until two years ago, Donald Trump wasn’t a recognized figure in American politics. However, with these two years, what he has achieved is simply astounding. A person who never held any political positions has been elected the President of the United States, the largest and the strongest economy in the world.
Trump’s political Ideologies
Born in New York City, Trump joined renowned undergraduate studies at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, he joined his father Fred Trump‘s company and was subsequently appointed as the President. In 1987, with his rising influence at Manhattan, Trump registered himself as a Republican.
In 1999, he abandoned the Republicans to join Independence Party of New York. Soon enough, he was affiliated with Democrats in 2001. Then, Trump saw his prospects in the Republican party. However, he initially remained affiliated only for two years – from 2009 to 2011. And, Trump joined it again in April 2012. Impartially looking at the frequent movements between parties, Trump seems to have been hugely affected by political situations at different times.
While, in 2004, Trump stood in favor of the Democrats with a belief that the US does better under Democrats than under Republicans, he now apparently stands on neither of the sides. Trump criticizes his own Republican party and follows his own political ideology. At the start of Trump Presidential campaign, he called the US a failing nation and promised the Americans that he’ll fix it. Trump likes to call himself of a representative of the ‘forgotten ones’. Hence, this makes him a populist. However, the experts have referred to his unusual and unconventional policies as Trumpism.
Political Involvement
Until 2014, Trump had been very inactive in politics. However, he has repeatedly considered about running for President. But, he never entered any race – not even the race for New York Governor in 2006 and 2014.
That means the ambitious Trump directly headed to run for President in 2016 – an unprecedented thing in the US politics.
Trump’s presidential race
Donald Trump declared his Republican candidacy on 16th June 2016. Primarily, he focused on immigration, jobs, national debt and terrorism with a campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again’. He then quickly rose to fame for denying political correctness and making controversial statements which tended to urge mixed responses from the Americans. Due to an attention-seeking campaign, Trump received large media coverage.
Trump’s campaign was slammed by many politicians including President Obama, Paul Ryan and numerous other political figures. Even the daily news publications advocated about the concentration of false statements in his speeches. Several studies suggested that Trump’s suggestive way of speech makes his messages unclear. Contradictorily, Trump called his statements ‘truthful hyperbole’.
At the beginning of primaries, inexperienced Trump stood against 16 Republican candidates who were clearly backed by the party. Anyway, he managed to get ahead from the very beginning, with a slight edge against Ted Cruz. With candidates dropping out sooner than expected, only Ted, John and Donald stood still until May primary in Indiana. After losing badly against Trump, both Cruz and Kasich dropped off their candidacy. Hence, Donald Trump was declared the Republican candidate for US Presidential election 2016.
Soon after being declared as the Republican nominee, Donald Trump’s eyes shifted towards mocking and undermining the Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton. The heat between the two candidates gradually gave rise to the most unconventional presidential campaign ever seen in the US history.
Vividly, Clinton was surpassing every reliable national poll against Trump. Slowly, Trump managed to pull himself up following his divisive and bluntly honest rhetoric and FBI investigation over Hillary Clinton. At this moment, while Clinton picked on Trump for tax returns, Trump poked Clinton to reveal the deleted emails from when she was the Secretary of State. In this neck to neck competition, Trump chose Mike Pence as his running mate.
The Presidential Debates starting on September 26 thrust Clinton’s polls to an unbelievable high. Speaking unbiasedly, Trump couldn’t stage himself as a knowledgeable person in the debates, although some of his arguments were worth a round of applause. Hence, Clinton was arguably presidential debate winner.
A few weeks prior to the debates, Trump faced sexual misconduct allegations. Several videos were posted on the internet where Trump was heard abusing women. On one of the videos, he says, “just start kissing them. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything … grab them by the pussy.” Hillary Clinton got a huge reason to request for votes. Unfortunately, Clinton was also slammed with email leaks by WikiLeaks.
On November 8, 2016, Americans voted for their champion. Hillary Clinton won 65.8 million votes, and Trump acquired 62.9 million votes. However, the Republican candidate Donald Trump got a landslide victory with 304 electoral votes. Hillary Clintons stayed sad and quiet at just 227 electoral votes. The 8th November was the day when the unexpected happened – in fact, no one foresaw Trump’s win.
Donald Trump is now running the White House and his team members are Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, Rex Tillerson, Steve Bannon, and Betsy DeVos.
