The announcement was perfectly appropriate: the Made-for-TV candidate won't be a candidate because his Made-for-TV show is more important to him.
"I love Celebrity Apprentice…we're going to continue making lots and lots of money for charity," Trump said.
During his brief flirtation with running for the White House, Trump was a Celebrity Candidate…getting way more attention than he deserved. And he reveled in it:
"I think Obama's doing an absolutely disgraceful job as president. The country's at an all time low and it's a very sad situation."
For a while, this could have been his campaign slogan:
"Have a good time everybody."
VIEWER VOICES: What do you think of Donald Trump's decision not to run for president in 2012?
But now that he's officially out of the race he never got into, let's give him the last word:
"Bye everybody."
Trump has now not run as a Republican, after not running in 1988 as a Democrat.
The next time he even talks about it, a reasonable voter could ask him, "deal or no deal?"
But that would be the wrong show.
I'm Andy Hiller, and that's my instinct.
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