Trump: "I May Do It."

More important than Imus and Charles knowing Donald Trump for 30 years is that Trump has known Imus and Charles just as long. “You guys are really going at it today,” Trump observed of the two ninnies sitting in the Fox studio this morning. “Charles looked very angry to me!”
 
Trump, the celebrity financier and real estate tycoon, is making a lot of political noise these days. But before getting into the meat and potatoes—also known as, will Trump run for president?—Imus asked the longtime New Yorker and part-time Palm Beach, FL resident about the lingering affects of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
 
“What he did to Palm Beach was incredible, the way he took away wealth,” Trump said. “Smart people, tough people, great businesspeople—they were invested with this guy. Years ago, you’d say, ‘Who do you invest your money with?’ They’d say, ‘Well Bernie Madoff, of course.’ Like you were an idiot to even ask a question like that.”
 
Trump estimated that $7-8 billion was wiped out of Palm Beach, and he marveled at his own unbelievable luck. “I’d see Bernie Madoff a lot, and he’d always say, ‘Why don’t you invest with me?’” Trump recalled. “It wasn’t like I knew anything, but I said, ‘No, no, it’s okay. I can lose my own money.’ I was kidding when I said that!”
 
But Trump was definitely not kidding last week, when he spoke at CPAC, the annual gathering of Conservatives in Washington, DC. Following a speech in which he took on, among others, President Obama and CPAC darling Rep. Ron Paul, the media has been buzzing with excitement over Trump’s intentions.
 
“Tell me,” Imus said to Trump. “Would you run for President?”
 
Following a typically long-winded, self-appraising response that touched on China, job creation, tax credits, and OPEC (they “wouldn’t even be tough” to deal with, he said), Trump replied, “I may do it. I’m thinking about it very seriously.”
 
He doesn’t think voters are as affected by candidates’ positions on issues like abortion and gay marriage as they used to be, probably because he strongly opposes gay marriage. “I am a very traditional person, I’m a conservative person—a very conservative person,” Trump insisted. “Much more conservative probably than you even know.”
 
Like Imus, Trump thinks Obama means well, but he is less concerned with whether the President is a good person. “I’d rather have a not nice guy,” Trump opined. “I’d much rather have somebody who would stick up for this country a lot more. We’re just dissipating this country. This country’s gone to hell, and it’s going to hell fast.”
 
If this country’s decline wasn’t Obama’s fault initially, Trump believes it is now. He also blamed President George W. Bush for America’s problems, particularly the war in Iraq. “As soon as we leave, Iran will go in and take over the oil wells in Iraq,” he said. “For hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, they were fighting each other back and forth, Iraq and Iran…for centuries! And then we come in, and we’ve totally denuded one of the countries. As sure as you’re sitting here, Iran will take over Iraq, unless we do something.”
 
Perhaps even surer is Trump’s intention to run for the Republican nomination for President in 2012. “If you run, we’ll vote for you,” Imus pledged to his friend.
 
Unless polling indicates that Romney, or Palin, or Pawlenty, or anybody else, has a better chance of winning.
 
-Julie Kanfer