The Big Read: So you want to be elected president?

To the outsider, the US elections present an absurd spectacle. How can a billionaire businessman who calls Mexicans rapists, routinely insults women, stereotypes black Americans, admires the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, threatens to bar Muslims from entering the country and to kill the families of terrorists, become a presidential candidate? Surely decent, responsible, fair-minded people would not give such a national and international menace a chance to become the leader of the free world...