Trump said a lot of crazy things the first time he ran for president

Former President Donald Trump is a natural-born showman who loves to blurt out whatever wild or weird thing that comes to his mind. He has said so many absurd things that it can be tough to remember some of the super crazy things he said before being voted out of office.

Luckily, the internet and news media have kept a pretty darn good record of all the terrible things Trump said way back when. The kind of stuff that you may have forgotten if you have been reading about some of his more recent Truth Social messages.

Today Trump loves to rant in all caps about those fascists and Democrats who are out to get him but back when he was first running for President of the United States he sported a different kind of unhinged crazy that lots of voters loved. Here are some of his worst quotes from back then.

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0

Trump kicked off his presidential campaign stating: "I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Well, Mexico never did pay for that wall according to NBC News, taxpayers did and it cost $15 billion.

Trump always had a hatred for Mexicans and got himself in a lot of trouble in 2015 when he said: “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems.” 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0

Trump followed up his comments by saying Mexicans were bringing drugs, crime, and sexual assault to America. It was one of the first of a string of racist remarks that upset the country, but it wasn't enough to keep him from being elected in 2016. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By U.S. Army photo by Pvt. Gabriel Silva, Public Domain

America knew Trump had an issue with admitting when he was wrong and Jimmy Fallon asked Trump in 2015 if he ever apologized, here’s what he said: I think apologizing's a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I'm ever wrong.”

One of the funniest and most awful moments of Trump’s first presidential campaign run came when he tried to differentiate himself from other candidates on women’s rights while speaking in  Tennessee, saying: “I will be phenomenal to the women. I want to help women.”

In 2016, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was grilling Trump hard on his abortion policy stance when he asked him if believed in punishment for abortions. Trump replied: “The answer is there has to be some form of punishment.” But the situation got much, much worse. 

Matthews quickly followed up Trump’s answer on abortions and punishment by asking if he meant that women should be punished, to which Trump replied: “Yeah, there has to be some form.” In hindsight, the quote casts his later work on abortion in a new light. 

Trump has posted a lot of bad things on Twitter but one of the worst was his call for more global warming in 2019. “It's really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming.”

In his 2015 announcement speech, Trump expressed his serious fears about America: “Our country is in serious trouble. We don't have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don't have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let's say China, in a trade deal? I beat China all the time. All the time.”

During a 2015 campaign rally in Iowa, Trump let the world know what he thought about John McCain’s reputation as a war hero. "He's not a war hero," Trump explained, "He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."

Another amazing Twitter rant came before Trump was elected to the presidency. In 2013, he took to the platform to proclaim his intelligence. “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest - and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault."

Trump has always been a bit authoritarian and his comments about waterboarding on ABC’s ‘The Week’ in 2015 really revealed that: “When you see the other side chopping off heads, waterboarding doesn't sound very severe.” So he was just fine with torturing others…

During a 2016 Republican debate, Trump shared his weird view on political correctness: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I've been challenged by so many people and I don't, frankly, have time for total political correctness.”

In the wake of Freddie Gray's death in 2015, Trump took to Twitter to share his thoughts on Barack Obama’s impact: “Our great African-American President hasn't exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore.”

While on The View in 2016, Trump shared some downright creepy thoughts when asked what he would do if Ivanka was on Playboy’s cover: “I don't think Ivanka would do that inside the magazine. Although she does have a very nice figure. I've said that if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I would be dating her." 

"The only card she has is the woman's card,” Trump said during an April 2016 news conference at Trump Tower. “She's got nothing else to offer and frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she's got going is the woman's card, and the beautiful thing is, women don't like her."