GOP ‘wall of shame’ on display inside Trump campaign HQ

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer
image

Trump at a news conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Sept. 28, 2015. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

Inside Donald Trump’s campaign headquarters on the fifth floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan is what the CIA might call a “kill list”: a “wall of shame” featuring the sad-looking photos of the 13 former Republican presidential candidates Trump has outlasted in the race for the GOP nomination — replete with the handwritten dates of when each dropped out.

• Rick Perry, “September 11, 2015”
• Scott Walker, “September 21, 2015”
• Bobby Jindal, “November 17, 2015”
• Lindsey Graham, “December 21, 2015”
• George Pataki, “December 29, 2015”
• Mike Huckabee, “February 1, 2015”
• Rand Paul, “February 3, 2016”
• Rick Santorum, “February 3, 2016”
• Chris Christie, “February 10, 2016”
• Carly Fiorina, “February 10, 2016”
• Jeb Bush, “February 20, 2016”
• Ben Carson, “March 14, 2016”
• Marco Rubio, “March 15, 2016”



An image of Trump’s wall of shame was published in this week’s New York Magazine, which was given a tour of the Republican frontrunner’s surprisingly sparse campaign offices for a cover story. Contributing editor Gabriel Sherman describes the decidedly un-Trumplike surroundings:

Two unmarked frosted-glass doors open onto a raw-concrete space with electrical wires and pipes hanging from the ceiling. Sheets of plywood were stacked haphazardly against the walls; plastic buckets and garbage cans were scattered across the floor. It looked like an abandoned construction site. In an unfinished room, I counted seven 20-somethings sitting at scuffed wooden desks and plastic foldout tables. Trump memorabilia festooned the walls. “This is all stuff people sent in,” said an earnest young man in a suit who works in voter outreach. He was sitting under an architectural rendering of the border wall that Trump insists Mexico will pay for. On the floor nearby was a model of the White House topped with a cardboard Trump cutout, American flags, and a pair of pink flamingos.



So whose grim-faced headshot gets hung on Trump’s wall of shame next?

According to the real estate mogul, Ohio Gov. John Kasich ought to already be up there.

“Kasich shouldn’t be allowed to run. Honestly, Kasich should not be allowed to run,” Trump told reporters Sunday while visiting a diner in Milwaukee. “He hurts Trump much more than he hurts [Ted] Cruz.”

“If I didn’t have Kasich, I automatically win,” Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin Sunday night.

Trump said that when he met with the Republican National Committee last week, he expressed his dismay over Kasich.

“I said, ‘Why is a guy allowed to run? All he’s doing is he goes from place to place, and loses and he keeps running,'” Trump said. “Kasich shouldn’t be allowed to continue, and the RNC shouldn’t allow him to continue.”

He added: “He doesn’t have to run and take my votes. Because he’s taking my votes. He’s not taking Cruz’s votes.“

But the Ohio governor refuses to cower.

“I’m dropping in, not dropping out,” Kasich said during a town hall at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., on Monday. "I got news for him. I’m gonna get a heckuva lot of his voters.”

Meanwhile, Trump is reportedly taking no chances with his safety on the campaign trail. According to Sherman, he has been wearing a bulletproof vest that "has added to his discomfort on the stump, leaving him sweaty and spent after events.”