This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
We’ve all heard Donald Trump bloviate on and on about the big, beautiful wall he absolutely, no-chance-in-hell will actually build. Everyone knows Trump has repeatedly claimed he’s going to deport 11 million immigrants, which he definitely will not be doing. We are now all aware that Trump says he’s going pull the United States out of NATO, ban Muslim immigration and do so much winning that America gets sick of winning, which is con-man-speak for “none of these things are actually going to happen.”
Yes, those are Donald Trump’s greatest hits, but what about the deep cuts? Do you know what Donald Trump says he’s going to do on the tech front? How about where he plans to vacation? Even Trump’s lesser-known promises are as filled to bursting with nuttiness as the ones you’ve already come to know.
Here’s a list of nine of Donald Trump’s lesser known yet equally crazy campaign promises.
1. Address Iran’s Supreme Leader as "Hey, Baby"
Donald Trump does not have time to call you by your name. That is because he is too busy kicking ass and taking names and then turning them into insults and calling you by those instead. Like when he called deaf actress Marlee Matlin “retarded,” reporter Jennifer Lin “that cunt,” one of his own African-American supporters a “thug,” rapper Lil Jon “Uncle Tom,” or his then-pregnant wife Melania a “monster” and a “blimp.” (It works for tragedies, too, like when he called 9/11 his preferred name, 7-Eleven.) He has also promised that when he meets the Ayatollah Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, he will never use his official title, but will instead call him “baby.”
“I guarantee you I will be never calling him the Supreme Leader,” Trump told a New Hampshire crowd. “He's not going to be called — I'll say, 'Hey baby, how ya doing?' I will never call him the Supreme Leader."
2. Never be in a bicycle race
In the late 1980s, Donald Trump tried to establish an American rival to the Tour de France, which he called — you’ll never guess — the Tour de Trump. (In the video below, after talking about how “tremendous” it’s going to be, he demurs when asked about a future political career saying, “I like to tell the truth. I’m not sure that a great politician can always tell the truth.” Ugh, this guy.) Like so many Trump steaks, universities, vodkas, boardgames, airlines, magazines, bottled waters and travel sites, Tour de Trump ultimately flopped.
Perhaps still embittered by that failure, Trump took a little time out of his presidential bid announcement unhinged, racist rant about Mexicans and immigrants to stick it to Secretary of State John Kerry, who broke his leg in a cycling accident last year. Embedded in his criticism of the Iran deal, Trump also promised never to ride a bike in a race.
“We won't be using a man like Secretary Kerry that has absolutely no concept of negotiation, who's making a horrible and laughable deal, who's just being tapped along as they make weapons right now, and then goes into a bicycle race at 72 years old, and falls and breaks his leg.”
“I won't be doing that. And I promise I will never be in a bicycle race. That I can tell you.”
3. Get rid of gun-free zones in schools
The Trump sons, Eric and Donald Jr., are well known for their love of taking rare, beautiful, endangered creatures and snuffing out their lives for sport. At a rally in Nevada, the elder Trump, who claims he never leaves home without his gun, talked about how much he and the boys love “the rifle stuff.”
“[Eric’s] getting better than me so I'm a little jealous. And Don...you were all over, right? He loves the rifle stuff. This is serious rifle. This is serious NRA, both of them, both of them. We love the Second Amendment folks, nobody loves it more than us, so just remember that.”
Trump’s love of guns — very deep, you’re not gonna believe how deep — has allowed him to recognize that the one problem with American schools is the glaring lack of “serious rifle.” To remedy that, the candidate has promised one of his very first missions in office will be to ensure students from pre-kindergarten to college are virtually surrounded by an arsenal of guns.
"I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools," Trump told Vermont supporters in January, according to The Washington Post. "My first day, it gets signed, okay? My first day. There's no more gun-free zones."
This sounds like a well thought out idea, totally rooted in common sense, with no obvious predictable likelihood of going tragically wrong.
4. Make everybody say 'Merry Christmas'
One thing that used to make America great was its complete contempt and disregard for the religions of non-Christian heathens. As we all know, the left has declared war on all that was once sacred in this country, including the birthday of baby Jesus. Trump is a very pious man who is cool with bragging about sex crimes but offended by Starbucks taking the phrase "Merry Christmas" off its holiday cups. That’s why when he takes office, you’d better forget you ever heard the phrases “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings.”
“If I become president, we’re all gonna be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again, that I can tell you,” Trump told his assembled flock of wackadoos in Illinois.
Later on the campaign trail, Trump again proved his religiousness by comparing his own book with the Bible. “We love the Bible. It’s the best,” Trump sayeth at a rally in Iowa. “We love 'The Art of the Deal,' but the Bible is far, far superior, yes.”
Jesus wept.
No, seriously. Like, heaving, shoulder-shaking sobs.
5. Fight against ISIS with "cyber"
Maybe Trump is so ahead of the curve on technology that he’s very far behind, which explains why he sounds like a character in a 1980s straight-to-video movie when he talks about cybersecurity. During the first presidential debate against rival Hillary Clinton, Trump tackled a question about the issue with a long answer highlighting his knowledge about “the cyber,” and what may have been an endorsement of his 10-year-old son as Cyber Tzar of the United States.
“As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said. We should be better than anybody else and perhaps we're not,” Trump, who was just getting started, said. “And I think Secretary Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what ISIS is doing with the internet, they're beating us at our own game. ISIS. So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is a, it is a huge problem.”
You might think that sounds like an answer given by someone who has never seen a computer before, and you might think wrong. Because Donald Trump has seen his own son using computers and he can tell just by looking — try not to get lost in the tech-speak here — that he is “unbelievable” at cyber.
“I have a son,” Trump continued. “He's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing, but that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better...and certainly cyber is one of them.”
A fitting response from the candidate whose 2005 book "Think Like a Billionaire" suggests most technology is “unnecessary and expensive,” and who brags he doesn’t “have a computer on my desk.” Trump also declared that “email is for wimps.”
6. Fight against ISIS by censoring the internet
Trump has incredibly forward-thinking ideas about how to stop the radicalization of Americans by ISIS via the internet.
Just kidding. He wants to censor the thing and actually thinks Bill Gates (and probably his 10-year-old son) is going to help him do it.
“We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet,” Trump said at a rally in South Carolina last year. “And we have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates, and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, [about] closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, 'Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people ... We’ve gotta maybe do something with the internet.”
This sounds easy. As president, Trump can probably just order Bill Gates and maybe some other nerds — I am sure this what Trump calls them — to turn out the lights on parts of the internet. It is such advanced, technologically-competent thinking that it will probably confuse even Bill Gates, but visionaries gonna visionary.
7. Drop Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl out of a plane on top of the Taliban or on top of ISIS — one or the other
Trump brings up Sgt. Bergdahl with surprising frequency in his speeches, and when he does, he mostly sticks to a well-worn script. First he refers to Bergdahl as a “dirty, rotten traitor.” Then he laments the trade that brought Bergdahl home and returned five Guantanamo detainees. Then he talks wistfully about the “old days,” when Bergdahl would’ve been shot for deserting. (Sometimes, he pantomimes shooting Bergdahl, to the crowd’s delight.) Then he says he’d return Bergdahl to the Taliban by dropping him from a plane.
“I’d actually give him back [to the Taliban]. I’d fly over, drop him right on top, you know, just, bing,” he told a crowd in South Carolina that absolutely ate it up.
Another time, in Oklahoma, he told the assembled, “As far as I’m concerned, we take him, we fly him over to the area — nice, heavily dense area loaded up with ISIS — and before we bomb the hell out of ISIS, we drop Bergdahl right in the middle of it.”
You can see in the clip below that the audience loved this little joke, and responds by laughing their heads off.
I wonder if they've heard the one about the rich kid who never volunteered to serve, and was given five draft deferments from Vietnam.
8. Never leave the White House
In "Think Like A Billionaire," Trump includes this bit of advice: “Don't take vacations. What's the point? If you're not enjoying your work, you're in the wrong job.”
Get it? Vacations are for losers. After the White House is done being completely gold-plated, and the 17-foot-tall letters spelling out TRUMP are firmly affixed, President Trump will move in and never leave again until his term is up.
"I would not be a president who took vacations,” Trump told the Hill. “I would not be a president that takes time off.”
Trump plans to spend most of his time working in the Oval Office, which he plans to have converted into a gigantic locker room.
9. Sue every woman who has accused him of sexual assault or abuse
At least 15 women have come forward with charges of sexual abuse and impropriety against Trump (not including his first wife Ivana, who accused him of marital rape during their divorce). If Trump’s character witness is himself, speaking on a 2005 video, or anytime over the last 30 years, this should’ve been an open-and-shut case. Instead, Trump is now presto-chango promising to sue the women who have stepped forward.
In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in a speech billed as a catalog of what he plans to get done in his first 100 days in office, Trump painted his accusers as political actors and outlined a policy of revenge.
“They’re trying to poison the mind of the American voter,” Trump said. “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign. Total fabrication, the events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
Except no, they actually won’t. Attorney Gloria Allred responded by calling Trump’s bluff.
“Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Trump,” Allred reportedly stated. “If you sue the accusers, the lawyers who represent these women will have the opportunity to depose you. In plain English, you will be required to testify under oath and the women’s lawyers will welcome the opportunity to question you under oath. You may find the questions may include all the women with whom you have had sexual interaction.”
In the end, Trump used the case to turn himself into a populist martyr, fighting for the little guy.
“If [the media] can fight somebody like me, who has unlimited resources to fight back, just look at what they can do to you — your jobs, your security, your education, your health care, the violation of religious liberty, the theft of your Second Amendment, the loss of your factories, your homes and much more.”
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