The Donald Trump Show comes to Norcross

? Donald Trump made his first visit to metro Atlanta as a presidential candidate, stopping by the North Atlanta Trade Center in Norcross on Saturday.
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? The real-estate tycoon was originally scheduled to appear in August at Erick Erickson’s Red State Gathering to deliver the event’s keynote address to conservative activists. But the right-wing pundit and talk radio host withdrew Trump’s invitation after he said a female Fox News anchor who asked him a difficult question during the first GOP presidential debate as having “blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
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? A line like that would lose some potential voters’ support. But Trump’s ratings went up. Recent polls show the executive and reality TV host leading by as much as 19 percent in New Hampshire and 5 percent in Iowa, the first two states where Republicans will cast votes.
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? And so it was Saturday afternoon in a crowded event hall filled to a capacity with more than 7,500 people, according to organizers. The room was packed with a vast majority of white faces in attendance — quite an accomplishment in Norcross where, according to census figures, 40 percent of the population is white, 39 percent is Latino, and 20 percent is black.
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? Trump took the stage to the Aerosmith song “Dream On” on the same day Steven Tyler threatened the Trump campaign with a lawsuit for using the song at his rallies. Right away, Trump’s boorish braggadocio was on full display. Less than a minute into his speech, apropos of nothing, Trump dropped a line about how rich he and his friends are.
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? “You know a friend of mine, a very rich guy, a very wealthy guy called me,” he said, before talking about all the people who are offering his campaign money. “I turn down millions and millions of dollars, it is so not like me, even though I don’t need it.”
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? Trump then lamented how much money he has given to politicians in the past — “I used to give fortunes,” he said, “I gave away so much money” — before mentioning that he has already spent $20 million of his own cash on his campaign.
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? Trump then launched an attack on Super PACs or political action committees. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, Super PACs allow people to spend endless amounts of money to support political campaigns. A New York Times report published the day after Trump’s speech found that more than $150 million has been donated to the presidential campaigns by just 158 families. Trump is the only major Republican presidential candidate who does not have the support of a super PAC.
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? His opinion of Super PACs was one of the few policy points he made during the Norcross event. In fact, his speech was more about platitudes than policy, a stand-up routine full of jokes and insults. For example: “Marco Rubio sweats like a pig,” “the press are very dishonest,” “we have stupid leaders,” “Our allies are thieves” “I look great in those ads,” “Can you believe I am a politician, I am embarrassed,” “‘I have a good gene pool.”
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? Forty minutes into his hour-long speech, Trump mentioned two policy ideas: getting rid of Common Core and building up the U.S. military to be “bigger and better and stronger than ever before.” A recent report found that the United States spends more on the military than the next 10 highest-spending countries combined, including, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Australia, Germany, Japan, India and South Korea.
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? Trump’s most detailed policy position was his plan to keep Mexicans from illegally crossing the border, a position that won one of the biggest cheers of the afternoon.
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? “We are going to have a border where people cannot come into our country illegally,” he said, adding that he loves “the Mexican people” and he has “thousands of Mexican people working for me.”
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? Not only did he say he going to build a wall to keep out the Mexicans, a wall which “if they go over it, it’s gonna be a long way down,” he even envisioned a future where it, like so many buildings in cities around the world, would feature his name.
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? “I want to make it really good looking,” he said, “because someday they will name it after me, the Trump wall.”
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? It is sad spectacle to watch one of the richest men in America running a campaign in which one of it’s biggest issues is to blame America’s problems on one of the poorest, most defenseless and hardest working sectors of America. On the day Trump announced he was running for president, he said Mexico was not “sending their best” people. The country was “sending people that have lots of problems,” and who are bringing crime and drugs. “They’re rapists,” he said.
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? Never mind that his statements are inaccurate. But the constant bashing of Mexican immigrants is scarily similar to the rhetoric of white nationalists and sounds like something you could hear at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Less than two weeks after Trump announced his campaign for president, the Daily Stormer, considered the largest Neo-Nazi website in America, endorsed him for the presidency.
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? The Trump Show ended with the candidate’s explanation of why he will be such a great negotiator when it comes to dealing with trade agreements.
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? “I have great relations with China,” he said. “I have tenants in my buildings who are from China.”
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? Trump closed with a summary of what his presidency would achieve. He told the crowd his administration would “cut taxes, take care of our military, take care of our vets, we are going to repeals and replace Obamacare, which is a disaster, we are going to build a wall and we are going to have a border and we are going to fight the whole anchor baby situation which is insane.”
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? Before closing, Trump delivered one final insult to the immigrant community by ridiculing the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to people born in the United States.
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? “Congratulations,” he said mockingly. “You now have a baby for 85 years that we are taking care of, I don’t think so, I don’t think so!”
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? And the crowd cheers.
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