'Donald Trump's campaign to be president is based on lies, racism and insults'

 United States Presidential candidate Donald Trump Photo:Courtesy

Donald Trump’s campaign to be President of the United States is based on lies, insults and toe-curling racism – and he doesn’t give a damn.

That’s because he’s still topping most of the polls to be the Republican candidate in next year’s race.

His latest comments were particularly repellent, even by his own gutter-scraping standards.

He called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims” entering the United States.

Despite his bile towards them, Trump , with a Scottish mother and German grandparents, is descended, like most Americans, from immigrants.

Yet the key to the appeal of the former military school pupil is that he differs from his compatriots by achieving the American dream, making himself a billionaire and a TV star in the process.

But while vitriol like Trump’s would normally sink anyone running for office, he’s still going strong.

And he seems determined to prove himself the most repugnant American politician ever.

The tycoon has been lapping up the publicity with the chutzpah of someone with a £2.6billion fortune and nothing to lose.

Referring to the 9/11 attacks , he said that if his call for a ban on Muslims was not heeded, there were going to be “many, many more World Trade Centers”.

The swaggering, bouffant-haired star of the US Apprentice is also known for his casual sexism and his even more casual racism.

He infamously claimed that during the 9/11 attacks “thousands of thousands of Arabs” in New Jersey “were cheering as that building was coming down”.

Even though the Presidential election will hinge on the Hispanic vote, Trump rarely wastes an opportunity to slur their community.

Before he decided to make political capital from the phantom threat posed by Muslims, he notoriously pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border – paid for by the Mexican government.

With his characteristic bravado, laced with crude xenophobia, he said: “I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively.

"I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

He then claimed that Mexicans entering the US were drug smugglers, crimelords and “rapists”.

He said he assumed that some were “good people” – as if that would make his remarks more palatable.

Trump was one of the more outspoken members of the Obama birther movement, which refused to accept that the President was born in the US.

Even when the White House produced evidence, Trump was unconvinced.

This may not seem surprising from a man who dismisses climate change – despite the scientific evidence – as just “weather”.

In one of the more memorable Trumpisms, which combined his hatred of foreigners with a redneck nationalism and a dislike for the facts, he declared that global warming was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”.

Unfortunately, while Trump is loathsome, objectionable and unpleasant, he’s not a fool and he’s still the frontrunner.

We know about American football, yet few people realise that the most popular live spectator sport in the country is stock car racing – or that Fast and Furious 7 is the fifth highest-grossing film of all time.

Trump understands this Middle America, the main battleground for Presidential elections.

To win the nomination, he needs to appeal to a shrivelled Republican Party whose members are primarily white, old and angry with the political establishment.

And all his remarks are aimed at milking this audience to get on the Presidential ticket.

He once said, without any apparent irony: “One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace. Good people don’t go into government.”

Many people in America will be hoping that a good person does get to the White House next November.

Not someone who peddles inflammatory and divisive mistruths to court the angry white vote.