Donald Trump is running for president as an outsider and rabid critic of President Barack Obama, a leading champion of the libel that the president was born in outside the United States.
But before Trump was against Obama, he was for him. And a detailed review of the real estate developer’s shifting opinions about the first black president — reproduced in full in our timeline, below — offers a glimpse at a man whose opinions seem neatly shaped to match nothing more than public opinion polling.
Though Trump endorsed John McCain (who he has, more recently, trashed) in the 2008 election, Trump was openly (and enthusiastically) supportive of the 44th president. He defended the president’s handling of the economic crisis — Obama, he said, is a “champion” who had saved America from a depression — and seemed excited by the ways that Obama might change America’s image around the world.
But as President Obama’s popularity began to decline in the months before the 2010 midterms, Trump’s view of Obama’s presidency did as well. A note of skepticism creeps into Trump’s comments in early 2010, around the time that Obamacare became law; while he did not criticize Obama overtly, Trump appeared suddenly hostile to the president.
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