Remember the primaries? Some hilarity ensued, and these were the best moments
It’s been a long, exhausting general election with an onslaught of news every day that may have made you forget the even-longer primaries. So we're taking a trip down memory lane through some of the most memorable moments, when there were way more people in the race.
Lindsey Graham gets some calls
The South Carolina senator was one of Trump’s fiercest critics, so in response, Trump read Graham’s cellphone number out loud during a South Carolina rally in July 2015.
“I found the number. I wrote the number down, I don’t know if it’s the right number, let’s try it,” Trump said before reading the number. It was.
“I don’t know give it a shot, your local politician. You know? He won’t fix anything but at least he’ll talk to you,” Trump said.
Graham was a good sport about it. One day later, he responded by publicly trashing his phone — it was a flip phone — for a video with IJReview.
'Dumb--- livestream'
In an effort to boost his faltering campaign in October 2015, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul spent a whole day live-streaming from the trail via Periscope. At one point, Paul read Google searches about him.
“The third question, most popular question from Google is, is Rand Paul running for president? And, uh, I don’t know. Wouldn’t be doing this dumb--- livestreaming if I weren’t. So yes, I am still running for president. Get over it,” he said.
Later he said, smirking: "This is not live, we can't edit this, right?"
Those high-heeled boots
Marco Rubio was spotted wearing a pair of heeled boots in New Hampshire in January 2016, which became a thing almost immediately.
Ben Carson’s run for clean clothes
It all started with a simple need in February 2016: Ben Carson wanted some clean clothes.
The Iowa caucuses had just finished, and Carson’s announcement that he was freshening up his wardrobe caused speculation that he was dropping out the race.
But his campaign followed up to clarify that it was just a temporary thing.
'America'
Former Florida governor Jeb (!) Bush was trying to promote his pro-Second Amendment stance on Twitter in February 2016. But it wasn't exactly clear because he didn’t give a lot of details. Bush gave only a one-word caption. Social media pounced.
Trump defends his, er, hand size
Trump during a GOP primary debate in March 2016, he defended the size of his hands, which Rubio — who began really digging into Trump on the trail toward the end of his campaign — had said were small.
“Look at those hands," he said, displaying them for the audience. Then he continued with what he apparently felt was the appropriate follow-up: bringing up the implication that the size of a man's hands revealed something about the size of another part of his anatomy.
"I guarantee you there's no problem" on that front, he said.
“He’s always calling me little Marco and I’ll admit he’s taller than me, he’s like 6’2, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2,” Rubio had said during a campaign event in Roanoke, Va., in late February. “You know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust them.”
Chris Christie is taken hostage
The New Jersey governor surprised many when he backed Trump, but when he introduced the businessman at a rally in Florida in March 2016, he didn’t look thrilled with his choice.
Carly Fiorina’s spill
The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard had dropped out of the race but joined Ted Cruz as his running mate. In early May 2016, she introduced the Cruz family in Lafayette, Ind., and then lost her footing.
Cruz elbows his wife in the face
Cruz had just announced he would be dropping out of the race in May 2016, effectively handing the nomination over to Trump. It was an emotional moment for the Texas senator, who went to embrace his wife and team. Except he couldn’t quite get his arm right.
No one notices Clinton at Chipotle
Clinton announced she was running for president and did a road trip in April 2015 in a van called “Scooby” as she was really trying to amplify her average-person creds.
It worked. When she went to a Chipotle in Ohio and ordered a chicken burrito bowl, no one even noticed.
A hacked email released in a trove from Wikileaks — which her campaign has neither confirmed or denied — show that the aides traveling with her knew she went unnoticed.
"HRC went through the line and ordered a burrito bowl with chicken and black beans, gauc, and an iced tea. No one noticed that she was there, which made for an awkward encounter between me and the manager as I was taking aerial shots of HRC ordering. I think he thought I was from the health department.”
'Damn emails'
Bernie Sanders dismissed a chance to hit Hillary Clinton over her private email scandal in October 2015. But the way he did it got him lots of attention.
“The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” Sanders said.
“Thank you, me too,” Clinton responded.