Name: A look back at when Donald Trump announced his presidential bid 10 years ago today
Uploaded: 2025-06-17T03:38:09.000Z
Duration: 9 min 30 s
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There you see it, 1105 AM, June 16th, 2015, 10 years ago today, Donald J.

Trump rode the golden escalator down into history.

Adverbs of manner

We need somebody that literally will take this country and make it great again.

But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again.

John Berman and Kate Baldwin were anchoring CNN that hour.

Ladies and gentlemen, you saw it just like we did.

Donald Trump just announced he is running for president, and in a way I'm glad we watched together because I'm not even sure I'm kidding when I say we all might look back and say we remember where we were when it happened, for better or for worse.

Now we have John Berman to look back and remember that moment, for better or worse, 10 years later alongside John Avalon and Errol Lewis who are also on that program.

John Berman, I'm going to start with you.

First of all, can I have something or whatever it is that you take because you look exactly the same.

Take that aside and we'll deal with that later because, you know, I have absolutely no jealousy at all here.

What are you thinking now as you watch yourself back then?

I've had a lot of work done and I appreciate everything that's been put into my face.

Look, I remember so vividly that moment, first of all, because we'd never seen a presidential announcement like that.

But the second thing is I think you have to remember the context because I was sitting there and four years before I had covered Donald Trump's flirtation with running when he was doing all the birther stuff.

I remember being in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, running around the streets after him.

And at that point, Donald Trump was doing it, I don't know, partially to drum up publicity, partially to help his businesses, partially because he liked the spotlight.

So when we were sitting there 10 years ago, I think one of the issues was, is he really serious this time?

Is he really going to go through with it?

And I think that I was most not surprised.

But what struck me the most was, wow, he really did it.

After flirting with this for so many years, he really just did it.

And I think he did it in a way that I think was was truly remarkable.

Again, as I said then, for better or for worse, but it was worthy of remark.

Well, you sort of had a, you were way ahead of where I was because I was still in Florida covering Jeb Bush's presidential announcement, which was the day before.

I didn't think it was important to run back.

So that remark was one step, many steps ahead of where I was then, I'll tell you that.

Errol Lewis and John Avalon, you haven't aged either.

I do want our viewers to hear what you said after that event.

The public seems to know or like something about this guy.

The first election I ever voted in a long time ago was in 1980.

And people said this B movie actor, Ronald Reagan, he was playing opposite a chimpanzee.

He couldn't possibly be a serious candidate for office.

That was about as unhinged street theater as you're ever going to see on a presidential stage.

This isn't remotely analogous to Ronald Reagan, a two-term governor in California, not even a little bit.

This is a reality TV show star trying to run to pump up his profile even more because he's drunk on pure ego.

I mean, look, obviously no one could have anticipated that calling Mexicans rapists and murderers would lead to a growth in the Latino vote for Republicans.

I think he ushered in a new era of populism that is a mirror to our culture, a reality TV show culture.

I also think he has demonstrably degraded our democracy over the past decade in ways that no one could have anticipated, involving lying about an election result and an attack on our Capitol.

And certainly no one would have expected that he'd be reelected four years after that.

So he was definitely a breaking of all precedent, more than just pure populism.

I just written a book called Wingnuts about extremism in American politics, and he seemed to be the acceleration of that.

And indeed he was.  Yeah, very much like John Berman.

I was expecting him to come down the escalator and say, stand by.

And the answer may surprise you and, you know, make sure you watch my next TV special or whatever it might have been.

We thought it was a bit of hucksterism that was going on.

And then he came down and he did what nobody expected.

And, you know, your news instinct kicks in.

It's like, OK, something I didn't expect, something very unlikely just happened.

I had interviewed Donald Trump one on one at Trump Tower only a few years prior, back when he was flirting with the idea.

And it was, you know, it was much of that was the kind of leading people along.

The answer may surprise you, all of that kind of stuff.

And I was prepared for one more round of it.

But now when when politics has changed fundamentally right in front of your face, it's one of the privileges of being a journalist.

And it's a tsunami rolling through that you didn't expect.

And you kind of, you know, tell people what you've seen and tell them if you're going to do pattern recognition, which is most of what political analysis is.

You also have to tell people when the pattern has been broken.

Well, speaking of pattern recognition, John Berman, just the end of the clip that we played of Donald Trump saying make America great again.

MAGA is not only is he consistent with that, it's become the Republican Party.

So that's one thing that's really striking.

Of course, we heard him talking about immigration and the fact that he was using words that Republicans were trying to run away from demonizing illegal immigrants.

He had a press conference just a short while ago where he was using virtually the same language.

He talked about Iran and its nuclear capability.

It's really stunning how he has some of these these themes, never mind the branding, which has obviously made him who he is, but also some of the policies which he latched on to then.

Yeah, look, a lot of the language is absolutely dead on.

He's not talking about the wall anymore, which was such a big part of that first campaign in the beginning of his presidency.

And I'm also just struck by something you said.

You were in Florida covering Jeb Bush's announcement.

And I think that's so essential to remember about because what Donald Trump was doing was juxtaposed to that.

It was the mirror image of what the Republican Party thought that it was.