The most famous escalator in America is a bit of a tourist trap these days. Exactly a decade ago, the conveyor to rise in gold brought Donald Trump in the basement of his eponymous Tower of New York and in the bowels of American politics. His descent of a second lingered more very well in the national memory than his 45 -minute speech which followed, a inflection point so largely cited – a test googling since Trump made the abandonment of the Gold Escalator – which he borders the cliché.
A recent Monday afternoon, the escalator that launched the Magi movement transported a constant flow of research fans of visits to the atrium of Trump Tower, where they could pay tribute to the president with purchases to Trump Grill (still on the menu: the Southwest Taco Bowl, immortalized tweetFor $ 25), the Trump store, Trump Sweets, and, for slightly cheaper tchotchkes, a souvenir shop nestled around the corner. One floor above, Trump’s faithful posed in front of an Insignia 45 with golden palette gold – a historic marker that has not yet been updated for the president’s second term.
All that was missing was a plaque commemorating the launch of the campaign that started everything, which took place 10 years ago today.
Almost anyone attended this 2015 event –I myself included– I think it would take Trump from a distance near the White House. That he would become, in the estimate of This magazine“The most consecutive American chief of the 21st century” was completely unthinkable. Trump had flirted with a presidential campaign several times beforetransmitting an offer each time. Most journalists doubted to continue in 2016; If he did it, many presumed, he would resign before he never has to file the required financial disclosure forms of a candidate. (Over time, Trump would econode the tradition of publishing its income statements to the public.)
The Democratic Party, which would later describe Trump as an authoritarian threat to the founding principles of the nation, initially spared him any criticism, rather choosing to welcome him in the presidential breed and to use it as a sheet for republican suitors – like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – who, according to that, believed to have a great chance of winning. “He adds a serious good necessary that previously lacked the field of the GOP,” said a spokesperson for Democrats at the time, “and we are impatient to learn more about his ideas for the nation.”
Trump, too, had other things in his mind in addition to winning. Instead of a detailed political platform, its aids presented journalists a file containing a document which evaluated its net value at $ 8.7 billion, a press release to confront widespread doubts as Trump was as rich as he always said. (To make a good measure, the candidate also devoted part of his discourse to the question of his wealth.)
In some respects, this initial event was entirely different from the mega-mega that would become the basic food of Trump’s campaign. He packed the press – as without mark as “false news” or “enemy of the people” – in the front and forced his supporters (some of whom were paid To assist) to watch his speech from the above floors.
What is the most striking about the June 2015 candidate Trump is how similar he is to President Trump in June 2025. To the pride of his supporters and the chagrin of his opponents, he has changed American politics over the past decade than has changed it.
As I noted at the timeHe opened his campaign with a lie on the size of the crowd. “Thousands,” he said, exaggerating a participation that had at most a few hundred people. Countless lies have followed during the decade since. The concerns of this first campaign speech – illegal immigration and foreign trade – are at the origin of its second administration. Trump’s most cited lines of his announcement come from his rant against undocumented immigrants. (“When Mexico sends its inhabitants, they do not send their best”, it said. “They bring crime. They are rapists. And some, I suppose, are good people. ”) But the first substance number he discussed was the trade and included a riff on the prices. “When when goes back the last time that someone saw us beat, say, China in a commercial agreement? They kill us,” complains Trump, less than a minute in his remarks.
In addition, Trump’s vision of himself as a leader who would act by himself, unloaded by the constraints imposed by the Congress or the Courts. (He did not mention anywhere in the speech.) At some point, Trump described an imagined scenario in which, as president, he would personally threaten the CEO of Ford with a “35%tax” on the sale of each car unless he moves a factory then planned from Mexico to the United States. The Titan of the company, Trump assured the crowd, Caverne quickly. Earlier this spring, the president published an audience warning At Tim Cook of Apple that he would massage a large price on all the iPhones built outside the United States – a threat almost identical to that which he had presented during his start in the countryside.
Trump himself has folded more of the times that he never admitted it. He abandoned his time promise for a long time to “Le Marais doole” in favor of open profit outside the presidency. And he largely abandoned the Trump Tower as a base of operations.
During his first campaign, Trump returned to his home in New York almost every night, and after his surprise elections in 2016, he carried out most of his interviews with potential cabinet secretaries. Job seekers and other supplicants, on the way to the upstairs meetings, paraded among journalists dotted in the hall. For a large part of Trump’s first mandate and Political loyalty commitment by the Republicans.
But Trump finally stopped going back to a city that had embittered on him. He was decamped to warmer climates (politically and meteorologically). His seaside resorts in West Palm Beach, Florida and Bedminster, New Jersey, were much more spacious and easier to secure. Although the first lady Melania Trump and the couple’s son, Barron, always spend Important time to Trump Tower, the president does not.
No one protested when I visited Trump Tower last week. The presence of visible security – a couple of police cruisers and a private guard at the front – was not large according to New York standards. In the atrium, however, supporters of the president gave the Trump organization many cases. “It looks exactly like television!” Evolves Amy Head, a 48 -year -old history teacher from Albany, Georgia. Seeing Trump Tower, she said, was a priority for his family’s trip to Manhattan, who also included tickets for the Lion King on Broadway and a visit to the September 11 commemorative museum. “We have been supporting him since he went down the Golden Escalator,” said Head about Trump when we were a few meters from this. “And we will vote again for him too, if we can.”
In a few cases, the praise of Trump fans with whom I spoke on Monday echoes, until the word, the comments that his supporters (paid or otherwise) made me ten years ago, when he launched his campaign for the first time in this very place. “He is not a politician. He is a businessman,” said Nathan Nielsen, a 50 -year -old Utah man. “He doesn’t have to do that. He does it for us.”
A few minutes later, a guide inaugurated a large group of high school students on the escalator. Was Trump Tower now an official tour of the tour, I wondered? Not exactly, the guide, Mike Koenig, told me. “I avoid this place like the plague,” he said. It was simply the closest (or at least the cleanest) public toilets of Central Park.