During his presidential announcement speech, Trump said, “The last quarter, it was just announced, our gross domestic product — a sign of strength, right? But not for us. It was below zero. Who ever heard of this? It’s never below zero.”
While Trump was likely referring to percent change in GDP, that too has been below zero many times in the past.
Trump used an acting firm to source attendees for his presidential campaign announcement, and to clap and cheer. He paid $50 per person.
The campaign delayed payment to the acting firm until legal action was threatened.
Corey Lewandowski, campaign manager at the time, denied the claim during Trump’s presidency:
“There is nobody who believes that when Donald Trump goes somewhere he does not generate the biggest, largest, and most rambunctious crowds on the planet.”
After losing the election, Lewandowski admitted that actors had been hired:
“Michael Cohen decided that he was going to go hire one of his buddies and pay his buddy without getting any campaign approval. You know, $50 for every person to come in, to stand in Trump Tower.”
On July 19, 2016, candidate Donald Trump gave a speech at Sun City’s Magnolia Hall in South Carolina. In trying to criticize Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal, Trump launched into a run-on sentence that became famous across news and social media.
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
Trump made the comment during a speech in Iowa two weeks before the state’s primary election. Trump came in second, about 3% behind Texas US Senator Ted Cruz.
Pulitzer-Prize winner and Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio. Michaeldantonio.net
In other discussions with his biographer, Trump noted how as a child he enjoyed fighting, which was one of the reasons he was sent to a military academy.
