Donald Trump Endorses Himself
NEW YORK (
) -- Just when America thought it had rid itself of Donald Trump as a self-imposed figure on the 2012 election landscape, he pulls us back in. And in classic Trump fashion, trumping the subject matter at hand.
Who else but Donald Trump could make an endorsement of a presidential candidate more about himself than about the candidate he is endorsing? Could The Donald do anything else and still be The Donald?
In the past 24-hour news cycle, the Gingrich and Romney campaigns were engaged in the fiercest Republican primary season battle since
Politico
held a blind taste test among food experts putting up former candidate Herman Cain's Godfather's Pizza against the rest of the pizza fast food class (Cain's brand did not fare well, which could have been a harbinger of things to come on the campaign trail).
The Donald lights up the Vegas strip, and all of the media, with his Romney endorsement. |
The Donald was at first set to endorse Newt, or so Newt's campaign said, before he decided on Mitt Romney. The Donald hasn't had such difficulty making a decision since the last episode of
The Apprentice
. Do we dare suggest during a presidential election cycle that Trump flip-flopped?
The news media scurried to set the story straight, with each reporter hot on the trail of The Donald's endorsement and hoping to have the scoop, though, getting a story about someone as shamelessly self-promotional as Trump merits the creation of a new word in journalism and about the getting of stories: the stoop.
It must be a crushing blow for the Gingrich campaign to lose this key endorsement (if true, please pause for reflection to consider what this tells us about the state of our great nation). Nevertheless, with Tea Party fave Christine O'Donnell already endorsing Romney, and now The Donald, the fact can't be denied that Mitt has at least two of the many lunatic fringes of the GOP wrapped up: Gingrich's fate seems sealed.
As far as Romney standing side by side with The Donald and remarking that it was the type of experience he would never have imagined happening in his life, it's also one more chance for
Romney to screw up by saying the Trump endorsement shows that he is the true representative of the filthy rich and all those who care little about the poor, unemployed masses in America, including I guess those unfortunate souls laid off by Trump during the run of
The Apprentice
.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul was able to use the absurd theater of the Trump endorsement as one more wedge issue in his campaign against the status quo in the Republican Party, calling Trump the
arch enemy of the GOP. Well, what Paul said exactly was that a Trump endorsement was worthless because Trump has given money to the "arch enemy of the GOP", Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev). So it was a point a to point B argument, and on this one, there is good reason to endorse the Paul philosophy: End the Donald!
As for actual politics -- which remains at least marginally above the level of Trump theatrics -- the Nevada primary is looking like a race between Romney and Paul, in a state where
Tea Party and libertarian sentiment is cresting.
Possibly, Trump inserted himself back into the thick of the race not only because it happened to coincide with the Nevada primary and some free ad space for Vegas -- Trump made his endorsement official at the Trump International Hotel & Tower -- but because he had just read with bitterness in the wake of the Facebook IPO filing that President Obama has more
'likes' on the social network than the four Republican candidates combined. He's got to do his part to ratchet up the celebrity appeal of his party.
And when you strip away the usual media circus, the most important and obvious point about Trump's endorsement is this -- In toying with the candidates and the media over the past 24 hours, Donald Trump endorsed the only candidate he would ever be capable of endorsing when it comes down to it: Himself.
-- Written by Eric Rosenbaum from New York.
RELATED STORIES:
>>Tight Race in Nevada Between Romney and Paul
>>Ron Paul: Trump 'Arch Enemy' of GOP
>>President Obama Tops Facebook 'Likes'
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