Watch Donald Trump at His Crudest (NSFW)

He says he can be “presidential.” Really?

<a href=>Brynn Anderson</a>/AP

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After his wins in the Mississippi and Michigan Republican primary elections on Tuesday night, GOP front-runner Donald Trump delivered rambling remarks in which he touted various Trump products (including Trump Steaks); slammed Mitt Romney, “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Little Marco”; defended Trump University; praised Megyn Kelly (for having said Trump had a good night); vowed to promote the use of “Merry Christmas”; and explained that “hostility works for some people but it doesn’t work for everybody.”

He also boasted, “I can be more presidential than anybody. I can be more presidential, if I want to be.” He added, “More presidential than anybody other than the great Abe Lincoln. He was very presidential, right?”

Presidential?

Trump has hardly been a champion of statesmanship or decorum. Through the decades, he has been brash and brazen. He has called Rosie O’Donnell a “dog” and compared having sex in the 1980s to serving in Vietnam. (Both were dangerous.) And recently he became the first presidential candidate to go on television and directly refer to the size of his penis.

Trump has a long history of crude remarks. But perhaps he was at his crudest when in 2009 he participated in a Comedy Central roast of comedian Joan Rivers. He appeared on the broadcast via a video clip. Seated at a desk in an office, Trump delivered the following, uh, tribute to Rivers.

Good evening, America, I am Donald Trump, and I’m not here to tell you roast jokes. Frankly, it’s beneath me. In fact, even doing cable—I only do network. I don’t do this kind of stuff. And I don’t like it. I’m here to announce my greatest, my most ambitious construction project yet: the Joan Rivers Facial and Body Renovation. And that is a big job. My trained eye tells me since 1982 you’ve been condemned from the waist down. And like most dilapidated structures, you haven’t been entered in decades. But I, Donald Trump, promise you no expense will be spared in your reconstruction. We’ll tent you, fumigate you, and, if necessary, send in a hazmat team to remove all hazardous materials found in that toxic pool you call a vagina. Which has already been responsible for at least one fatality. Trump Rivers will be one of my biggest projects ever. But Donald Trump is up to the challenge to make you, what we in real estate business call [bleep] friendly.

The word bleeped out seemed to be “dick.”

Truly classy. And very presidential. Just like Lincoln.

If you really want to watch:

 

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We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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