Three years ago on Saturday, on 16 June 2015, at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Donald Trump descended a gold-plated escalator and announced his run for president. He flashed a thumbs up to a fawning crowd, some of whom had reportedly been paid $50 to be there.

Trump laid out his vision for the country: a screed the media largely wrote off as the implausible musings of a man whose only chance of living on Pennsylvania Avenue would come from the Trump hotel – which was then a building site.

Trump promised to be the “greatest jobs president that God ever created”, then accused Mexico of sending to the US drug traffickers, criminals and rapists. He promised to build a wall along the southern border and to end Barack Obama’s shielding from deportation of millions of undocumented migrants.

Three years later, on immigration at least, President Trump is working double-time to make that vision reality.

Here’s a look back at some of the news coverage from the day Trump launched his campaign. Some of it now seems prescient. Some seems comically wrong.

The business mogul, who has never held public office, enters an extremely crowded field of Republican presidential hopefuls, now numbering a dozen major candidates. And it remains to be seen how he will distinguish himself from his rivals on policy issues, in part because he’s steered clear of many policy specifics: last month, he raised eyebrows when he said he had a “foolproof plan” to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group, but refused to reveal details because ‘I don’t want the enemy to know what I’m doing’.

The report included a mocking comment from the Democratic National Committee that has not aged particularly well:

Today, Donald Trump became the second major Republican candidate to announce for president in two days. He adds some much-needed seriousness that has previously been lacking from the GOP field, and we look forward to hearing more about his ideas for the nation.”

Donald J Trump, the garrulous real estate developer whose name has adorned apartment buildings, hotels, Trump-brand neckties and Trump-brand steaks, announced on Tuesday his entry into the 2016 presidential race, brandishing his wealth and fame as chief qualifications in an improbable quest for the Republican nomination. It seems a remote prospect that Republicans, stung in 2012 by the caricature of their nominee, Mitt Romney, as a pampered and politically tone-deaf financier, would rebound by nominating a real estate magnate who has published books with titles such as, Think Like a Billionaire and Midas Touch: Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich — And Why Most Don’t.



Trump at his official campaign launch. Photograph: Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

His entrance presents complications for rival candidates and the Republican party. He is likely to qualify for the first two Republican National Committee-sanctioned presidential debates, which Fox News and CNN have limited to candidates who place in the top 10 in national polling … A Trump campaign also complicates NBC’s plans for the Celebrity Apprentice. NBC has determined that having Mr Trump appear in a weekly entertainment program could require it to provide a similar outlet to other candidates, an NBC official said.”

Trump, real estate magnate and reality TV star, painted a picture of an out-of-control border that he said border guards are describing to him. He said the people coming to the US are not just from Mexico ‘but all over South and Latin America’ and ‘probably from the Middle East.’”

Trump showed Tuesday that he won’t shy away from the out-of-reach luxury and opulence that makes up his day-to-day lifestyle … the spectators got a flavor for the type of candidate Trump plans to become – one who shoots from the hip and doesn’t care for a script – and the ideas he’ll promote. Trump called for everything from new infrastructure (‘We’re becoming a third world country!’) to erecting a massive fence on the border with Mexico – which he said he would have Mexico pay for – to the need for a thorough plan to defeat Isis.”

The carload of Republicans running for President now has a clown. Billionaire Donald Trump threw his red rubber nose into the ring Tuesday with a jaw-dropping ad-libbed speech in which he insulted Mexican immigrants, derided foreign countries and lambasted President Obama and other American leaders as ‘losers’.

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he’s running for president and vowed to be America’s Mr Fix It – tackling unemployment, illegal immigration and terrorism.”

Interestingly, the paper also noted:

Trump later appeared on ABC and said he’d be a sure winner if Oprah Winfrey joined his ticket. ‘I think Oprah would be great. I’d love to have Oprah,’ Trump said. ‘I think we’d win easily, actually.’



And finally… The Guardian