Donald Trump may have had a celebrated Latino newsman thrown out of a press conference on Tuesday, and declared that two of his rivals for president were “hugging and kissing and holding each other”, but he is establishing a real frontrunner campaign in Iowa. Immigration and gender continued to hound the real estate mogul’s theatric run for the White House as a return to this first-in-the-nation voting state was quickly overshadowed by another run-in with the news media. Then the leading Republican candidate for president proceeded to once again draw thousands at a rally to an operation described by Brad Anderson, the current president’s Iowa director in the 2012 election, as “Obama-esque”. The fireworks came early, inside the press room of the river city of Dubuque, after Univision anchor Jorge Ramos stood up and started asking a question without being called on. Trump tried to ignore Ramos – whose highly rated Spanish language news telecast has had him labeled “the Walter Cronkite of Latino America” – and called on another reporter. When Ramos persisted, Trump retorted “You weren’t called” and repeatedly asked Ramos to “sit down”, then told him to “go back to Univision”. Finally a security guard working for Trump forcibly escorted Ramos out of the room. The billionaire observed that the television anchor had “stood up and started screaming” and went on to describe Ramos as “ a very emotional person”. Ramos was later allowed back in the press room and engaged in a prolonged back and forth with Trump on immigration, which has been both his pet issue and his most notorious. Trump touted his building acumen and told Ramos: “I’ve got a bigger heart than you do,” as well as asserting that gang violence in cities like Baltimore and Ferguson was due to illegal immigrants. The episode represented Trump’s second showdown with a major news anchor in less than a day. Late on Monday night he retweeted someone who called the Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly “a bimbo”. Trump has become a bitter critic of Kelly after what he said was unfair questioning during the first televised debate earlier in August. He described Kelly as having “blood coming out of her wherever”, which was widely interpreted as a reference to menstruation and led to his being banned from a major conservative conference. Fox chief asks Trump to apologize for 'verbal assaults' on Megyn Kelly Read more Despite demands for an apology from the network, Trump doubled down on his criticism of Fox in the Iowa press conference. “I think Fox treats me terribly,” he declared. When asked about his Twitter account’s controversial trumpeting, Trump said that “to a certain extent” he did endorse what he retweeted and implied he was responsible for much of his online activity: “I do a lot of things by myself. People would be surprised.” Apart from the media, Trump took the rally to go after his usual targets: China, Iran and John Kerry, whom he described as “a schmuck”. He added a new wrinkle: the relationship between Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. Trump observed that while Rubio’s decision to run for president was widely viewed as a rebuke towards his political mentor Bush, the two were still “hugging and kissing and holding each other” in person. He compared it to New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s famous hug of Barack Obama on the eve of the 2012 presidential election during the recovery from hurricane Sandy. Advertisement To Trump this was symbolic of the hypocrisy of politicians faking their emotions for the cameras. And it resonated with Steve Rosonke of Dubuque, who hadn’t participated in caucuses “since I was in college” and said he came out to support Trump in Iowa because “he’s verbalizing what a lot of people think”.

• published: 26 Aug 2015
• views: 5