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The Trump's Golden Elevator-2015 turned 2024 into a slippery slope ... "
Kamala Harris


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 This article is more than 5 years old
Golden escalator ride: the surreal day Trump kicked off his bid for president
This article is more than 5 years old
On 16 June 2015, the then mogul announced his White House run. Four years on, reporters who covered that Trump Tower speech recall the lies and bombast that now define his presidency

Adam Gabbatt
Adam Gabbatt in New York
Fri 14 Jun 2019 12.13 EDT
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Given everything that has happened in the past four years, it’s not a huge surprise to learn that the first words of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign were a lie.

Four years ago, on 16 June 2015, after Trump had slowly descended a golden escalator to the basement of his eponymous New York tower, he clambered on to a makeshift stage and began his announcement speech.

“Wow. Woah. That is some group of people. Thousands!” Trump said, looking out towards a bank of TV cameras.

Except that’s not how people who were there remember it.

“There were a few dozen people lining the area leading down to the escalator, and then there were a couple dozen downstairs where the event actually took place,” said Alana Wise, who covered the campaign launch for Reuters news agency.









“That kind of frenetic energy that we got later on,” Wise said, “it just wasn’t there.”

Trump’s misinterpretation of the number of attendees kicked off what would be a surreal afternoon, as the businessman set off on an offensive, angry speech, the nadir of which saw Trump accuse Mexico of sending “rapists” to the US.

The rhetoric worked: he was soon at the top of the Republican polls. But it’s a sign of how Trump’s candidacy was viewed that covering his campaign wasn’t seen as a particularly senior gig.

Donald Trump announces his candidacy on that day in 2015.
View image in fullscreen
Donald Trump announces his candidacy on that day in 2015. Photograph: Christopher Gregory/Getty Images

Wise said: “I was an intern at Reuters at the time. It was one of my first assignments out of the office.”

In the days following Trump’s announcement, it emerged that the Trump campaign had paid people $50 to attend the event. “We are looking to cast people for the event to wear T-shirts and carry signs and help cheer him in support of his announcement,” read the casting call. Wise, now a reporting fellow for WAMU radio’s Guns and America project, remembers it being an unusual audience.

“There were some people who lived in the building who had come down, and then there were just a lot of people just kind of from off the street who had come in to see it,” she said. “There was a lot of just random curiosity happening.”

Charlotte Alter was far from a veteran political correspondent when she covered Trump’s launch. In 2015 she was a junior reporter for Time magazine, keen to get involved in coverage of the presidential election.

“I, at the time, was a very junior reporter and I was based in New York. So in some ways sending me was … they were kind of throwing me a bone, I think.”

At Trump’s later campaign rallies he would play music by the Rolling Stones, Queen and Neil Young – each of whom asked him to stop doing so. But at the campaign launch, he took a different tack. Alter, who co-wrote Time’s story with then political correspondent Alex Altman, remembers The Music of the Night, from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, being blasted on repeat while journalists waited for Trump’s descent.

Before the speech, Trump’s fledgling campaign staff had circulated planned remarks, Alter said, but Trump quickly went off script.

I don't think anybody came away from that announcement thinking he was going to be the next president
Charlotte Alter
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said, as he claimed the country was dispatching immigrants to the US. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump was best known internationally for his hair, TV show, and proclaimed wealth. In the US, however, he had been waging what many saw as a racist “birther” campaign against Barack Obama for years, falsely claiming the then president had been born in Kenya. But even for close Trump watchers, the speech represented new extremes.

“I don’t think anybody came away from that announcement thinking he was going to be the next president. But it was clear immediately afterwards that his talent for getting attention was going to serve him well,” Alter said.

For Heather Haddon, then a political reporter at the Wall Street Journal, one of the surprises was that Trump had finally done it. The president likes to insist that 2016 was the first time he had run for office, but as far back as 1988 he had flirted with running, and he ran for the Reform party nomination in 1999.


“Definitely the sense was … there’s no way this guy is going to make it,” Haddon said.

As for the event itself, Haddon remembers there being an “almost pro-wrestling” tone to the announcement.

“It was angry but it was also so matter-of-fact,” said Haddon, who now covers business at the Journal. “It just seemed so stream-of-consciousness. Going from one topic to another, things that might, I guess, excite people, set people off. It was all just sort of spewed out there.”

Trump’s initial announcement set a precedent for speeches throughout his campaign and, eventually, his presidency.
View image in fullscreen
Trump’s initial announcement set a precedent for speeches throughout his campaign and, eventually, his presidency. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP
The speech set a precedent for the freewheeling addresses Trump made throughout his campaign, and has continued to make in the White House.

“I think everyone just left there shocked,” Haddon said.

The Guardian dispatched business reporter Rupert Neate to Trump Tower. Neate, who is British, remembers that colleagues at the time didn’t think it was “particularly a big deal”, but recalls then being stunned by the content of Trump’s speech.

“I thought, if it was Britain and someone was to come and say all those extreme things, you’d think it was sort of like a far-right, extreme-slash-jokey candidate, and there’s no chance he’s ever going to win this,” Neate said.

“But look how wrong that assumption would be.”

Trump is due to launch his re-election campaign Tuesday in Orlando. This time, there really will be thousands in attendance, but whether they will leave with as vivid memories as those who witnessed the 2015 launch remains to be seen.

Alter, now a national correspondent for Time, has written extensively about US politics in the past four years, but said she often thinks of that June afternoon in 2015.


“At the time – I don’t know if it’s still there – there was a Trump ice-cream parlor,” she said.

Behind the counter was a man who told Alter he was from Mexico. Alter didn’t use him in the story, she said, uncomfortable about whether it could affect his job or immigration status, but she had “thought a lot” about him since.

“This was the speech where Trump said the thing about Mexicans as rapists. And 40ft in front of him, behind all the cameras there is a guy from Mexico, almost certainly an undocumented immigrant, scooping ice cream for Trump banana splits, wearing a hat that says Trump ice cream on it,” Alter said.

“It was just so interesting to me that literally, you know, Trump is speaking to this crowd and there are all these cameras, and then behind the cameras, behind the crowd, in his line of vision, there’s this guy standing directly in front of him, who is a perfect example of all of the sort of contradictions at work in this campaign.”

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***
.. then he came down the Golden escalator"
A fellow English teacher was talking to me about this phrase.

I had it heard it a lot from the media - from the day Trump actually came down the aforementioned escalators, during his Presidency, right up until last week on CNN. My friend said it will become a modern idiom, if ain't already.

I said, how? What is the phrase supposed to mean, outside of Trump?

He said, it may mean a seemingly meaningless day that would unknowingly be the start of something unusual. Or it may mean when an unusual or unbelievable person enters a somewhat normal situation.

I said, oh, okay. Then I said, it could also simply mean when something unexpected happens. I also said, this phrase probably won't last long. He disagreed.

Don't get me wrong, I love English phrases, idioms and neologisms, which is one of the reasons I'm an English teacher - but I'm just unsure about this one.

What do you guys think?

(By the way, my favorite popular culture idioms are "Okay, Boomer" (2019) and "Drink the Kool Aid" (1978) )


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[deleted]
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1y ago
u/intelligentplatonic avatar
intelligentplatonic
•
1y ago
First ive heard of it.


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AdEmpty4390
•
1y ago
But Trump and the Golden Shower — there’s a phrase with some staying power.


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eeyorey
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1y ago
It may become a popular allusion, but I don't see how it will become idiom, as it will always be specific to that event.



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bkat004
OP
•
1y ago
That’s what I thought too, but Drinking the Kool Aid went beyond its original event


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Kendota_Tanassian
•
1y ago
I don't see "coming down the golden escalator" becoming a common phrase, it's a specific reference to a single incident.

I think there's a lot more of a chance for other phrases around Trump or his followers to gain ground.

"They wore a red hat" says a lot more than what color of headgear they wore.

I think "covfefe" has legs as a shining example of a non sequitur.

Whatever you think of Trump, there's no doubt he's affected the language "bigly".



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u/kenatogo avatar
kenatogo
•
1y ago
"Alternative facts" had some impact as well, though we can attribute it to Kellyanne Conway


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[deleted]
•
1y ago
I disagree with you, in the sense that it won't last long. I think it will be around for a long time.


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u/tunaman808 avatar
tunaman808
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1y ago
But it was an actual gold escalator. Here's a picture of it.

"Okay, Boomer" (2019) and "Drink the Kool Aid" (1978)

Just so ya know, "Okay, Boomer" is rapidly becoming an ageist saying used by stupid kids, and although "drink the Kool-Aid" is the phrase, they mostly used Flavor-Aid:




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alwaystakeabanana
•
1y ago
When was "Okay, Boomer" not an ageist saying.


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bkat004
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•
1y ago
I knew they used Flavor Aid.
You're right about it being ageist. I am just fascinated by its etymology


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ktappe
•
1y ago
I think the opportunities to use it will be so few that it seems dubious it could become common vernacular.


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[deleted]
•
1y ago
I don't think the ride down the escalator itself had enough novelty or significance to become an idiom.


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hassh
•
1y ago
Ain't now and ain't gonna


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[deleted]
•
1y ago
Context: Trump after the indictments, " from the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower... the radical left Democrats [have persecuted me]."

So Trump is the speaker. I get the sense that he's saying he stooped, condescended, lowered himself from the golden heights to the lowly presidency.



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bkat004
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•
1y ago
This is true.
Man, what an egomaniac!


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u/Usagi_Shinobi avatar
Usagi_Shinobi
•
1y ago
If it does become an idiom, it will not be a positive one.


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u/GregHullender avatar
GregHullender
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1y ago
It might become one, but, at the moment, I don't see any sign that it has. Partly because we still don't know how it's all going to play out. (I.e. was that the beginning of the end of American democracy? Or was it just the start of a chaotic period?)


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***
slippery slope
noun
: a course of action that seems to lead inevitably from one action or result to another with unintended consequences

Examples of slippery slope in a Sentence
His behavior will lead him down a slippery slope to ruin.
Recent Examples on the Web
Click here to read more about the slippery slope that has Silicon Valley panicked.
—Max Thornberry, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 26 July 2024
Today’s settlement is the latest in the slippery slope of the last few years that has erased many of the rules that stood for a century or more for college athletes.
—Bruce Haring, Deadline, 26 July 2024
But the slippery slope created by software bans is not inconsequential.
—Lily Hay Newman, WIRED, 1 July 2024
The musical was based on an infamous 1936 exploitation/scare film that had been created ostensibly to warn youth about the slippery slope to madness and murder that would result from puffing marijuana.
—Chris Willman, Variety, 6 Aug. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'slippery slope.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.


Word History
First Known Use
1951, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of slippery slope was in 1951
See more words from the same year
Dictionary Entries Near slippery slope
slippery slide

slippery slope

slip plane