On the heels of polls showing that he would not have won had he run, real-estate developer and host of TV's 'The Apprentice' announced he will not be running for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination. He made the announcement Monday, May 16, 2011 and claimed that his reasons were due to his love of his current job.
"I have spent the past several months unofficially campaigning and recognize that running for public office cannot be done half heartedly," Trump said in a written statement. "Ultimately, however, business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector."
Bloomberg News Reported Trump Would Run
Trump's statement came two days after Arkansas Republican Governor Mike Huckabee said that he would not run in 2012. It also came some two weeks after Bloomberg News reported Trump had told them he would run and was waiting to make the announcement.
In a May 2nd Bloomberg News online story with an Alison Fitzgerald byline titled NBC Says Trump’s Show Goes On as He Says He’ll Seek Presidency, Fitzgerald wrote: "Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg News on May 1 that he had decided 'in my mind' to run for president, but wouldn’t make an official announcement before the season finale of his reality television show later this month."
Polls Find Trump, Palin, Not Popular
The 64-year-old Trump did not say if recent polls had anything to do with his decision not to run. A CNN/Opinion Research poll released Thursday, May 5 2011 found that of all probable or potential Republican candidates for the 2012 U.S. presidential race Trump was the least desirable. In that poll 64 percent of adult Americans polled said they had an unfavorable opinion of Trump.
A poll conducted by Quinnipiac University Polling Institute and released the day before the CNN/Opinion poll also painted a dismal portrait of Trump finding success in a race for the Oval Office. In that poll nearly 60 percent of respondents said they would not support Trump. USA Today quoted Peter Brown of Quinnipiac as saying Trump's chances of winning were "infinitesimal."
Trump Faded with 'Birther' Issue
Trump got media attention with his slavish devotion to the issue of President Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate and, despite Obama birth documents already in the public domain, insisted Obama prove further he was a natural-born U.S. citizen. Once the White House released Obama's long-form birth certificate, Trump's moment in the Presidential spotlight quickly faded.
"We do not have time for this kind of silliness," Obama said at the time of the release of the document. "We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers."
It would appear that the lead carnival barker has left the race.
Join the Conversation