It was the escalator ride that would change history.
Four years ago on Sunday, Donald Trump descended through the pink marble and brass atrium of Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president , the first step on a journey few believed would take him all the way to the White House.
It turns out the 2015 event might not have happened, at least not on June 16. And the over-the-top staging that featured a crowd including paid actors could have been even more theatrical if one early idea hadn't been scrapped.
FILE - In this May 20, 2019 file photo, President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd as he finishes speaking at a campaign rally in Montoursville, Pa. Trump will be launching his re-election bid this week in Florida. (AP PhotoEvan Vucci)
(Trump nixed suggestions to feature a live elephant. "Too political," he decided.)
Now, the president who loves to reminisce about that "famous" Trump Tower moment is trying to recreate the magic as he formally launches his re-election bid Tuesday in Florida. Four years in, Trump still is echoing much of the same divisive rhetoric he let fly when he ditched the speech prepared for that original campaign kickoff.
His 2015 announcement, according to those involved in the effort, was a classic Trump production aimed at highlighting all the things that made Trump, well, Trump: his brashness, his wealth and his skill for lighting rhetorical fires and watching the press scramble to respond.
Trump had been in Europe playing golf the week before his scheduled announcement, with plans to return in time to go over remarks written by his ragtag team of early staffers.
"I get a call while he is in Europe and he asked, 'What do you think about postponing this a little?'" recalled Sam Nunberg, an early campaign adviser. But the press already had been invited, trips to early-voting states planned and the timing — a day after assumed front-runner Jeb Bush's announcement — seemed ideal.
And there was fear among advisers that any delay would trigger talk of cold feet about a campaign some observers doubted would ever happen because Trump had already flirted with, but then bailed on, previous bids.
"I tell him, 'We can't do that. We have set this date. If we postpone it, it would be covered that you got cold feet and you would not be taken seriously,'" said Nunberg. "I told him that postponing would be like Madonna not performing at MSG on a show day," referring to New York's Madison Square Garden.
So the show went on. Trump and his wife, Melania, emerged from an upper level of Trump Tower and descended the "famous" escalator, with the future president offering thumbs-ups and waves. It was a scene Trump had carefully crafted, paying frequent visits to the lobby as crews worked through the night to erect press risers, build the stage he would stand on and polish every inch of marble and brass.
A speech had been written. But Corey Lewandowski, Trump's first campaign manager, wrote in his book, "Let Trump Be Trump," that the candidate "gave a quick look at the sheet of paper Corey handed him, folded it up, and put it in his breast pocket, never to look at it again."
Four years later Trump remembers it fondly.
"I never forget standing on the famous escalator, you know the escalator, right?" he likes to tell crowds. "Remember the scene with Melania in front of me waving very elegantly and Trump coming down, waving less elegantly? But I just took a deep breath and I said, 'Let's go do it. Let's make this country great,' because it takes guts. It takes guts. And I'm so glad I did it."
And four years later, the speech Trump delivered, following an introduction from his eldest daughter, Ivanka, sounds just like one he would deliver today.
"Our country is in serious trouble. We don't have victories anymore," Trump told the crowd, railing against China for "killing us on trade" and promising to build a "great, great wall" along the U.S.-Mexico border that the American ally would pay for, "Mark my words."
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," Trump said in one infamous line. He panned Obama-era unemployment statistics as "full of nonsense" and described himself as "really rich."
"He's doing exactly what he said he was going to do, and as a result of what he said he was going to do, he got elected," said George Gigicos, who was hired to produce the 2015 event and went on to serve as advance director for both the campaign and at the White House.
Trump, said Roger Stone, another longtime adviser, "orchestrated every minute detail of his announcement," including vetoing a suggestion from his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to decorate the lobby with red, white and blue bunting and feature a live elephant to add to the circus.
Trump "decided to come down the escalator and worked from his own handwritten notes rather than a prepared text," said Stone, insisting that, "then, as now, Donald Trump does not have handlers or managers or chief strategists."
That included scrapping aides' ideas on what he should wear.
"He asked me about a black suit. I said, 'Yes, that's iconic, that's 'The Apprentice,''" recalled Nunberg. Trump disagreed. "He said 'You're a moron. Blue is better. It works better with the flags.' He was right."
Trump was thrilled with the speech's reception and later remarked on how successful the day had been for his brand. "How great is this for Trump?" Nunberg recalled the candidate saying at one point.
It helped, of course, that some in the crowd had been paid to be there. Extras were offered $50 to "wear t-shirts and carry signs and help cheer" in support of Trump's announcement, according to a casting call email obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.
The ploy was first discovered by Angelo Carusone, now president of the progressive Media Matters group. Carusone said after the event, he was struck that, at a time of selfie obsession, he couldn't find anyone who had posted photos of themselves attending the event.
"That was weird," he remembered thinking. "People who care about a presidential press announcement are going to post selfies," he said. He finally came across a single photo posted by a man who worked as an extra and taken with a woman who appeared to do the same.
Trump's campaign has never acknowledged knowingly hiring actors, but did acknowledge paying $12,000 to Gotham Government Relations, a firm that was said to have hired the Extra Mile Inc. casting company, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Neither Gotham nor GMLV Casting, which took over Extra Mile, responded to requests for comment in recent days.
While some in Trump's orbit suggested a return to Trump Tower for his re-election announcement, the president will head to Orlando — in a state he must win to secure a second term.
This time, there will be no need to hire actors. Trump and his campaign say 100,000 tickets have been requested for Tuesday's event at the 20,000-seat Amway Center. The event will feature a pregame show with food trucks, live music and jumbo screens to pump up the crowd.
Even if Trump is exaggerating, there is little doubt the arena will be packed.
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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States vetoed a widely backed U.N. resolution Thursday that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought and Israel has worked to prevent.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S. allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution.
The strong support the Palestinians received reflects not only the growing number of countries recognizing their statehood but almost certainly the global support for Palestinians facing a humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.
The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized Palestine, so its admission would have been approved, likely by a much higher number of countries.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that the veto “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood but instead is an acknowledgment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties."
The United States has “been very clear consistently that premature actions in New York — even with the best intentions — will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people,” deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
His voice breaking at times, Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the council after the vote: “The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination.”
“We will not stop in our effort,” he said. “The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real. Perhaps they see it as far away, but we see it as near.”
This is the second Palestinian attempt for full membership and comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority’s application for U.N. membership in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.
They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state in 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.
Algerian U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission “a critical step toward rectifying a longstanding injustice" and said that “peace will come from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion.”
In explaining the U.S. veto, Wood said there are “unresolved questions” on whether Palestine meets the criteria to be considered a state. He pointed to Hamas still exerting power and influence in the Gaza Strip, which is a key part of the state envisioned by the Palestinians.
Wood stressed that the U.S. commitment to a two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine live side-by-side in peace, is the only path for security for both sides and for Israel to establish relations with all its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia.
“The United States is committed to intensifying its engagement with the Palestinians and the rest of the region, not only to address the current crisis in Gaza, but to advance a political settlement that will create a path to Palestinian statehood and membership in the United Nations,” he said.
Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, reiterated the commitment to a two-state solution but asserted that Israel believes Palestine "is a permanent strategic threat."
"Israel will do its best to block the sovereignty of a Palestinian state and to make sure that the Palestinian people are exiled away from their homeland or remain under its occupation forever,” he said.
He demanded of the council and diplomats crowded in the chamber: “What will the international community do? What will you do?”
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been stalled for years, and Israel’s right-wing government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood.
Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the resolution “disconnected to the reality on the ground” and warned that it “will cause only destruction for years to come and harm any chance for future dialogue.”
Six months after the Oct. 7 attack by the Hamas militant group, which controlled Gaza, and the killing of 1,200 people in “the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he accused the Security Council of seeking “to reward the perpetrators of these atrocities with statehood.”
Israel’s military offensive in response has killed over 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and destroyed much of the territory, which speaker after speaker denounced Thursday.
After the vote, Erdan thanked the United States and particularly President Joe Biden “for standing up for truth and morality in the face of hypocrisy and politics.”
He called the Palestinian Authority — which controls the West Bank and the U.S. wants to see take over Gaza where Hamas still has sway — “a terror supporting entity.”
The Israeli U.N. ambassador referred to the requirements for U.N. membership – accepting the obligations in the U.N. Charter and being a “peace-loving” state.
“How can you say seriously that the Palestinians are peace loving? How?” Erdan asked. “The Palestinians are paying terrorists, paying them to slaughter us. None of their leaders condemns terrorism, nor the Oct. 7 massacre. They call Hamas their brothers.”
Despite the Palestinian failure to meet the criteria for U.N. membership, Erdan said most council members supported it.
“It’s very sad because your vote will only embolden Palestinian rejectionism every more and make peace almost impossible,” he said.
Algeria's Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations Amar Bendjama speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour holds tears while speaking during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Representatives of member countries take votes during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour, left, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speak before a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Representatives of member countries take votes during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood votes against resolution during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
