Trump in all his glory

COLUMBUS

If you haven’t experienced Donald Trump speaking in person, you are missing the full extent of his persona and his presidential aspirations.

The televised GOP debates don’t provide a complete picture of his demeanor and the way he is connecting with voters.

He spoke for about an hour just down the street from the Statehouse one recent evening, with a speech that was rambling and repetitive – and the crowd mostly loved it.

It was outrageous at times, poignant at others, questionable, long on bluster and short on details and difficult to encapsulate in news coverage.

In case you missed it, here are some of the things he said, directly quoted, for whatever it’s worth:

On His Speeches: “I made one the other day it was for an hour and 45 minutes, no teleprompter, no nothing, no speech, no notes. And you know what does happen? First of all, it’s more exciting, because you never know what the hell’s going to happen. ... But you’re also speaking from the heart.”

On His Leadership Style: “I’m probably the nicest person, but I’m not a sucker. ... We’re tired of being run by stupid people.”

On Politicians: “I’m not a politician. All-talk, no- action politicians, they talk, talk, they get nothing done. ... They’re controlled by their PACs. I’m the only one that’s self funding my campaign.”

On Pundits: “I’m much smarter than all of them, I think. I think I have a much higher IQ. I think I went to a better college.”

On America’s Status Internationally: “We’ve become soft. We’ve become weak. We’ve become a laughingstock all over the world.”

On Assertions that People Publicly Celebrated the World Trade Center Attacks: “Thousands of people believe me, because they saw it. ... They want to try and deny it, but you can’t deny it. Many people in this room heard about it, probably saw it.”

On Winning: “We’re going to win in so many different ways.”

On National Security: “I’m going to be great. I’m going to be just as good. I’m going to hopefully be even better at our security and at making us really strong and not having you worry about horrible things happening to your cities where you have scum ... you have garbage ... you have people that are bad. We’re going to be safe.”

On His Business Policies: “I’m going to have the greatest business minds in the world, and we have the greatest. I know many of them. I know all of them. Some are nice people, some are not nice people. I don’t care. Do we care if they’re nice?”

On ISIS: “We want to keep that crap out of here. We want to keep it out, and I’m the guy to do it.”

On Companies Moving Overseas: “I talk a lot about deals. Oh, are we going to make great trade deals. ... We’re losing tremendous numbers of jobs ... through faulty taxes and faulty programs. ... They’re allowing these great companies to leave our country with thousands and tens of thousands and ultimately millions of jobs left behind. I’ll stop that so fast.”

His Bottom Line: “We’re going to make America great again, and you’re going to be so proud, and I love you all.”

And, “You’re going to be so happy. And you’re going to win again. We’re going to start winning so much. We’re going to win.”

And, “The American Dream is dead. But we’re going to make it bigger and better and stronger than ever before.”

Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s Statehouse correspondent. Email him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.