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Donald Trump’s Presidential Run Began in an Effort to Gain Stature
Latching On to Romney
Having stepped back from a campaign of his own, Mr. Trump sought relevance through Mr. Romney’s. Again, Mr. Trump’s determination to seize a role for himself collided with the skepticism of those he approached: While he saw himself as an important spokesman on economic issues and a credible champion for the party, the Romney campaign viewed him as an unpredictable attention-seeker with no real political foundation.
Still, given his expansive media platform — in addition to his reality-show franchise, Mr. Trump was a frequent guest on Fox News — and a fortune that he could theoretically bestow upon a campaign, Mr. Trump was drawing presidential candidates seeking his support to his Fifth Avenue high-rise. In September 2011, Mr. Romney made the trip, entering and exiting discreetly, with no cameras on hand to capture the event.
The decision to court Mr. Trump, former Romney aides said in interviews, stemmed partly from the desire to use him for fund-raising help, but also from the conviction that it would be more dangerous to shun such an expert provocateur than to build a relationship with him and try to contain him.
The test of that strategy came in January 2012, before the make-or-break Florida primary, when Mr. Trump reached out to say he wanted to endorse Mr. Romney at a Trump property in the state. Wary of such a spectacle in a crucial state, Mr. Romney’s aides began a concerted effort to relegate Mr. Trump’s endorsement to a sideshow.
The Romney campaign conducted polling in four states that showed Mr. Trump unpopular everywhere but Nevada, and suggested to Mr. Trump that they hold an endorsement event there, far away from Florida voters.
On the day he was to deliver the endorsement in Las Vegas, according to Mr. Romney’s advisers, Mr. Trump met with Romney aides and said he hoped to hold a joint news conference with Mr. Romney, raising for the campaign the terrifying possibility that Mr. Romney might end up on camera responding to reporters’ questions next to a man who had spent months questioning whether the president was an American citizen.
In an appeal to Mr. Trump’s vanity, the Romney campaign stressed that his endorsement was so vital — with such potential to ripple in the media — that it would be a mistake to dilute the impact with a question-and-answer session.
“The self-professed genius was just stupid enough to buy our ruse,” said Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for the Romney campaign. While they agreed to hold the event in a Trump hotel, the campaign put up blue curtains around the ballroom when the endorsement took place, so that Mr. Romney did not appear to be standing “in a burlesque house or one of Saddam’s palaces,” Mr. Williams said. On stage, as the cameras captured the moment, Mr. Romney seemed almost bewildered. “There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life,” he told reporters as he took the podium, taking in his surroundings. “This is one of them.”
“There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life.” — Mitt Romney, receiving a Trump endorsement in 2012. CreditMonica Almeida/The New York Times
Mr. Trump insisted in the interview that the Romney campaign had strenuously lobbied for his support, and described his own endorsement as the biggest of that year. “What they’re saying is not true,” he said.
But if Mr. Trump expected a major role in the Romney campaign, he was mistaken. While Mr. Trump hosted fund-raising events for Mr. Romney, the two men never hit the campaign trail together. The campaign allowed Mr. Trump to record automated phone calls for Mr. Romney, but drew the line at his demand for a prominent speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. (Mr. Trump recorded a video to be played on the first day of the convention, but the whole day’s events were canceled because of bad weather.)
Stuart Stevens, a senior strategist for Mr. Romney, believed that Mr. Trump had been strictly corralled. “He wanted to campaign with Mitt,” Mr. Stevens wrote in an email. “Nope. Killed. Wanted to speak at the convention. Nope. Killed.”
Still, to Mr. Romney’s opponent that year, the accommodation of Mr. Trump looked egregious. Mr. Obama, in a speech on Friday, said Republicans had long treated Mr. Trump’s provocations as “a hoot” — just as long as they were directed at the president.
