{"id":58442,"date":"2015-08-08T08:03:23","date_gmt":"2015-08-08T00:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=58442"},"modified":"2015-08-08T16:14:07","modified_gmt":"2015-08-08T08:14:07","slug":"as-canadian-leaders-debated-trump-was-producing-the-wildest-show-in-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/08\/08\/as-canadian-leaders-debated-trump-was-producing-the-wildest-show-in-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"As Canadian leaders debated, Trump was producing the wildest show in politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.835017% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/483209418?et=esdgFxn8TshlHSgkqyCKXA&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=zClCZDcIz6Uu3tpEAnvPMw_I9STjqTVPYbZtYiKQpZo=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"397\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0 0 0 10px; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/483209418\" target=\"_blank\">View image<\/a> | <a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\" target=\"_blank\">gettyimages.com<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>WASHINGTON &#8212; The first debate of the U.S. presidential election cycle was only a moment old and arguably wilder than anything that&#8217;s happened in any Canadian leaders&#8217; debate, ever _ let alone Thursday&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s because Canadian politics doesn&#8217;t have anybody like Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<p>As the Canadian debate entered halftime, Republican presidential candidates hit the stage with the swirly haired political hurricane smack in the middle, settling at the prized centre-podium reserved for the primary poll-leader.<\/p>\n<p>Within mere minutes Trump had threatened to run against his own party; insulted actress Rosie O&#8217;Donnell; and accused the moderator of being biased against him.<\/p>\n<p>Boos rained down on the boastful billionaire as he refused to promise he wouldn&#8217;t run against Republicans should they nominate someone else.<\/p>\n<p>The moderator had asked the 10 participants to raise their hand if they wouldn&#8217;t swear off a run against Republicans. Only one hand shot up &#8212; Trump&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>The incredulous moderator cut in: This is a Republican party event, he asked Trump, and you&#8217;re saying you&#8217;d be willing to run against this party, split the right-wing vote, and guarantee a Democratic win?<\/p>\n<p>Yup, Trump replied.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I fully understand,&#8221; Trump elaborated, to groans from the crowd.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I cannot say. I have to respect the person if it&#8217;s not me&#8230; If I do win, and I&#8217;m leading by quite a bit, that&#8217;s what I want to do&#8230; If I&#8217;m the nominee, I will not run as an independent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That prompted Sen. Rand Paul to interject: &#8220;He buys and sells politicians of all stripes. He&#8217;s already hedging his bets on the Clintons&#8230; because he&#8217;s used to buying politicians.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Another moderator then asked why Trump&#8217;s candour &#8212; while sometimes refreshing &#8212; includes a mean streak in which he&#8217;s publicly referred to women as fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.<\/p>\n<p>Trump interjected: &#8220;Only Rosie O&#8217;Donnell.&#8221; He went on to express pride in eschewing political correctness, which drew some cheers from the Cleveland crowd. Trump also scolded the co-moderator, Megyn Kelly, for being unfair to him. She&#8217;d noted his insults extended far beyond O&#8217;Donnell.<\/p>\n<p>Such jaw-dropping moments might explain why the fascination with Trump stretches across international boundaries. He&#8217;s not only creating waves in the U.S., he&#8217;s also crushing Canada&#8217;s party leaders when it comes to Google searches.<\/p>\n<p>According to Canadian Google searches in the past 30 days, Trump got nearly the same number of searches as Stephen Harper, Justin\u00a0Trudeau\u00a0and Thomas Mulcair combined.<\/p>\n<p>Figures provided by Google shown that among searches for the Canadian leaders and for the Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, Trump got 42 per cent; Harper got 27;\u00a0Trudeau\u00a0got 17; Clinton got nine; and, despite his NDP leading recent polls, Mulcair had only five per cent.<\/p>\n<p>Trump squeezed in a Canada reference Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>He was asked about his past support for single-payer medicine and replied: &#8220;It works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could&#8217;ve worked (here) in a different age.&#8221; He called the U.S. health system corrupted by insurance companies, and said he now favours breaking barriers between state exchanges to allow nationwide competition.<\/p>\n<p>When Paul attacked him again, accusing him of still favouring socialized medicine, Trump replied: &#8220;I don&#8217;t think you heard me &#8212; you&#8217;re having a hard time tonight.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The American political world had speculated that the fascination with the outlandish mogul could lead to record ratings for Thursday&#8217;s Fox News debate, which started an hour after the Canadian leaders debate.<\/p>\n<p>Trump even became an issue in a debate he wasn&#8217;t part of Thursday. The topic of his candidacy came up in the so-called kiddie-table debate, consisting of candidates who didn&#8217;t make the Top 10 for the prime-time show.<\/p>\n<p>Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Caryl Fiorina, whom Fox pundits later unanimously deemed as the most impressive participant, said Trump had managed to connect with a grumpy American public.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think he&#8217;s tapped into an anger that people feel. They&#8217;re sick of politics as usual,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>But she also took a little shot at him &#8212; for flip-flopping on some issues where he once held liberal positions, like his one-time support for abortion and single-payer, Canadian-style health care.<\/p>\n<p>She noted that he&#8217;d also donated to both Clintons&#8217; campaigns.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans have started to challenge Trump&#8217;s conservative credentials. Because those who tried a previous line of attack &#8212; calling him an ill-informed buffoon &#8212; saw it backfire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>View image | gettyimages.com WASHINGTON &#8212; The first debate of the U.S. presidential election cycle was only a moment old &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":58444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,18,483,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ca","category-politics","category-news-w","mauthors-alexander-panetta","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}