…Meet your presumptive Republican nominee, America.
It’s official: Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president of the United States.
While that news sinks in, it’s time to brush up on who Trump is and exactly how he plans to “make America great again” (not that you’ll find many actual plans). Here’s what you—and every voter in America—need to know about the businessman-turned-reality-show-star-turned-presidential-nominee.
1. During his very first appearance as a candidate for president—his announcement speech—Donald Trump said that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”
He hasn’t gotten more measured from there: Trump has said he would assemble a deportation force to round up and remove 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., and he would overturn President Obama’s executive orders on immigration that are keeping millions of immigrant families together.
2. He announced a ban on all Muslims (even U.S. citizens) from entering the country.
Trump has called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. And when asked if his ban would include Muslim Americans who are currently out of the country, Trump’s spokesperson responded, “Everyone.”
3. Trump would bring back torture—and he thinks waterboarding isn’t enough.
Trump’s reaction to the terrorist attacks in Brussels was frighteningly simple: “By the way, torture works.” And he wouldn’t just bring waterboarding back. He says he would “absolutely” go further.
4. His plan for ISIS is to “bomb the shit out of them.”
His plan to defeat ISIS is no more complex: “I’d just bomb those suckers,” he said. “I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch, there would be nothing left.”
(For comparison’s sake, here’s what a strategic plan to defeat ISIS and radical jihadism looks like.)
5. Trump opposed an increase to the minimum wage.
The federal minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25 an hour—hardly a living wage in 2016. But rather than supporting a federal minimum wage increase, Trump has said that “wages are too high,” and that it’s stifling our economic competitiveness.
6. He would force all schools to allow guns in classrooms on his first day in office.
We lose more than 33,000 Americans to gun violence every single year—and nearly 3,000 of them are children and teenagers. But instead of giving parents, teachers, schools, and communities the right to set commonsense measures to keep kids safe and put an end to this epidemic, Trump says he would mandate every school in America allow guns in classrooms. “My first day, it gets signed, OK? My first day. There’s no more gun-free zones.”
7. Trump said women should be punished for seeking an abortion.
Republicans across the country have been strategically chipping away at a woman’s right to reproductive health care, including safe and legal abortion. So it’s particularly troubling that their party’s new standard-bearer, when asked if women should be punished for having an abortion, said: “There has to be some form of punishment.”
8. Trump thinks women should “do as good a job” as men if they want equal pay.
The average American woman working full time makes 79 percent of what men are paid—and it’s not because they aren’t working as hard. But responding to a question about equal pay, Trump said, “You’re gonna make the same if you do as good a job.”
9. There’s only one candidate in this race—on either side—who has gotten more votes than Trump: Hillary Clinton.
Hillary has received nearly two million more votes than Trump. And now that he’s the presumptive nominee, Hillary is the only thing standing in the way of President Trump in the White House.
But we can’t get complacent. Remember that 16 Republicans—once described as “the deepest GOP field in a very, very long time”—tried and failed to stop Trump. Democrats can’t underestimate him either. There’s too much at stake.