NEW YORK—Neil Young’s Republican-mocking anthem “Rockin’ in the Free World” played, for some reason, and Donald Trump rode the Trump Tower escalator down from the floor with the Trump Bar and Trump Store to the floor with the Trump Cafe and Trump’s Ice Cream Parlor.

Trump, noted opponent of understatement, walked to a podium set up in front of eight American flags. One of his assistants then sent out a mass email with the text of his big speech. In paragraph four, he was going to announce his candidacy for president of the United States.

That, he decided, could wait. There were cameras around, rolling live. Donald Trump had things to say.

Abandoning his prepared remarks, Trump began with a nonsensical joke about air conditioning and Islamic State. Two minutes in, he called migrants from Mexico “rapists.” Eight minutes in, he claimed Americans must get hit by a tractor — “literally, a tractor!” — to use their Obamacare health insurance.

The Republican business mogul and reality television star declared his campaign for the world’s most powerful job Tuesday only after 15 minutes of rambling. By then he had already given the strangest announcement address in modern American history.

And he had not yet got to the parts about John Kerry’s bicycle accident, the dingy floors at LaGuardia Airport, the guy he knows who once had trouble sending a boat to China, or the “Great, Great Wall” he plans to build on the Mexican border and have Mexico pay for, mark his words.

“Sadly, the American dream is dead,” he declared around the 50-minute mark. “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.”

Trump pronounced himself “really rich.” His chances are poor. He is, at present, one of the most unpopular candidates ever. In a recent Fox News poll, 59 per cent of Republicans said they would “never” support him.

But his unpredictable mouth could wreak havoc on a race that was already crowded and chaotic without him. He has enough money — a net worth of $8.7 billion (U.S.), he claimed — to spread his outsider message aggressively. Most importantly, he already has enough national support, about 4 per cent, to gain entry to crucial early debates, which are limited to the top 10 candidates.

The field will likely include at least 15 people. Trump, the country’s most famous skeptic of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, could make the cut over a prominent office-holder like Ohio Gov. John Kasich or the only woman in the race, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina.

“I think if he’s willing to hit the road, if he’s willing to do town halls, meet people, do one-on-ones, do round tables, he has just as good a shot as anyone,” said Brandon Newton, chair of the Republican organization in Lancaster County, S.C.

“We don’t always want to have just people who are currently in elected office. I think his point of view will bring a lot to the field. And definitely shake up things in the debates, that’s for sure.”

FIVE WEIRD QUOTES FROM TRUMP’S SPEECH

1. “You come into LaGuardia Airport, it’s like we’re in a Third World country. You look at the patches and the 40-year-old floor. They throw down asphalt.”

2. “We need money. We’re dying. We’re dying. We need money. We have to do it.”

3. “I like China. I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?”

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4. “Obamacare really kicks in in ’16, 2016. Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I actually would say, ‘I have the best courses in the world.’ ”

5. “Saudi Arabia, they make $1 billion a day. One billion a day. I love the Saudis. Many are in this building. They make a billion dollars a day. Whenever they have problems, we send over the ships. We say, ‘We’re gonna protect.’ What are we doing?”