Brad Power

Donald Trump: Old America is Back Brad Power

Publisher Marketing: In a campaign-style appearance in Boca Raton, Donald Trump told the Tea Party crowd that he's a real conservative -- he's anti-tax, pro-life, pro-gun, and will "fight to get rid of Obamacare." Three elderly people fainted at the rally. We hope they swooned for the April sun, not at Trump's convictions. It shouldn't be a surprise that Trump has latched onto the far-right's birtherism. As he enters his fourth decade as a professional attention seeker, Trump has a long record of saying just about anything that will win him headlines. Especially when it strikes a cultural or political nerve. It's not even the first time that Trump has flirted with running for office as part of his brand: Way back in 1987, for example, he started buying full-page ads in newspapers in which he opined on national issues. Two weeks after a jogger in Central Park was brutally raped and left in a coma, he took out full-page ads in several newspapers calling for the death penalty for the "savages." There was another set that ran in the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post (at a personal cost of $95,000) which proclaimed, "There's nothing wrong with America that a little backbone can't cure," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. His flack tried to stoke a little political speculation by denying any plan to run for mayor, governor or Senator but added that Trump "will not comment about the presidency." In 2000, Trump wrote a faux presidential campaign book, The America We Deserve, which Slate's Dave Weigel actually bothered to read, in which Trump claimed that he was ready to lead America towards socialism.