Donald Trump likes to talk about himself, but he says the movement he has sparked is even bigger than he is.
Trump arrived in Greenville, S.C. Thursday, fresh off new poll results showing him crushing the Republican presidential field at 28 percent support among right-leaning voters.
Within seconds of departing the local airport, a throng of supporters approached Trump’s caravan to snap pictures with the billionaire as he made his way to a convention center in Greenville where a boisterous crowd awaited his arrival.
Soon after taking the stage, Trump unfolded a copy of Thursday’s New York Times to read the front-page story about his recent exchange with Hispanic Univision anchor Jorge Ramos.
“I’m always on the front page of the New York Times now — like almost every day,” he told supporters.
“El hombre del peluquín, the man of the toupee,” Trump read aloud from the report.
Adding, “I don’t wear a toupee,” before summoning a random woman onto the stage to verify the authenticity of his locks.
The Times’ story detailed the Trump’s tense relationship with Spanish-language media and included negative comments from several radio talk hosts about the brash business mogul’s confrontation with Ramos.
“I made my speech the other night in Iowa, but nobody talks about it because I had this guy [Ramos] get up and start ranting and raving like a lunatic,” Trump said in reaction. “The news stations kept covering this maniac and saying the candidate, that’s me, ‘erupted.'”
“I never erupted,” he said.
Playing off his recent speech in Iowa, Trump told the crowd of supporters to that they belong to a “silent majority” that’s grown tired of “politicians who are all talk, no action [and] don’t know what they’re doing aside from running for reelection.”
“It’s not me, there’s a movement going on. There’s something happening,” he said. “We have not been heard for a long time, but we’re being heard now big-league.”
The outspoken billionaire, who’s routinely been criticized for his cocksure demeanor, defended his approach as “tough, but necessary.”
“We need a tough tone or we’re not going to have a country,” he said, adding that a “doctor recently told me I have the blood pressure of a great athlete; I have great temperament.”
Trump also described his “unpredictability” as something that gives him an edge among other candidates.
“We need unpredictability,” he said. “We’re so predictable. We’re like bad checker players and we’re playing against Putin.”
Less than 24 hours after Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told voters in Seattle to vote for other candidates “if you’re eager for war,” the real estate magnate described himself as “the most militaristic of all” on Thursday.
“But you have to use it right or don’t use it at all,” he said in reference to America’s military capabilities.
The GOP hopeful’s fiery rhetoric appears to resonating in the Palmetto State. In a recent Monmouth University poll, Trump led his rivals by double digits with 30 percent support among Republican primary voters.
“I used to think Jeb Bush was the guy you had to beat, but I don’t even know who’s second,” he said Thursday, before adding that retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson secured the No. 2 spot in the poll.
“I can’t hit Ben Carson and I can’t hit Ted Cruz, I may have to if [Cruz] starts getting too close to me, but they’ve both been so nice to me,” Trump said of his two fellow candidates.
Trump was invited to speak to supporters as part of the Upstate Chamber Coalition’s Presidential Series, marking the GOP front-runner’s seventh visit to the state since announcing his candidacy in mid-June.
Thursday’s record-breaking attendance about 1,800 supporters far surpassed crowds drawn by previous candidates who’ve participated in the Upstate presidential series. Last week, the real estate mogul drew the largest crowd of any campaign event so far in the current cycle when roughly 30,000 Alabamians turned out to hear him speak.
