Trump endorses Romney after a puzzling Vegas day

Don­ald Trump speaks at a news con­fer­ence Thurs­day in Las Vegas, to endorse Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney, cen­ter, accom­pa­nied by Romney’s wife Ann. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Ger­ald Herbert)

BETH FOUHY

Asso­ci­ated Press

LAS VEGAS — With his trade­mark flair for spec­ta­cle, Don­ald Trump endorsed Mitt Rom­ney for pres­i­dent Thurs­day on the famed Las Vegas strip — just hours after Newt Gingrich’s advis­ers were spread­ing the word that The Don­ald would be anoint­ing him instead.

Trump’s endorse­ment seemed likely to affect this Saturday’s Nevada pri­mary — and the GOP nom­i­na­tion fight in gen­eral — about as much as a Sin City breeze dis­turbs the real estate mogul’s leg­endary hair. But he man­aged to cre­ate a stir of a dif­fer­ent sort, at least for a day.

Rom­ney said he was glad to get the sup­port, but he seemed almost bemused to be caught up in the Trumpian drama.

“There are some things you just can’t imag­ine hap­pen­ing. This is one of them,” Rom­ney said with a smile, look­ing out at the reporters and cam­eras jammed into the lobby of the hotel com­plex that bears Trump’s name. The real estate mogul had entered to applause, with Rom­ney and his wife, Ann, at his side

“Mitt is tough, he’s smart, he’s sharp and he’s not going to allow bad things to con­tinue to hap­pen to this coun­try we all love,” Trump said. He vig­or­ously shook Romney’s hand and said, “Go out and get ‘em. You can do it.”

But the endorse­ment was just the finale for a puz­zling chain of events that began Wednes­day when Trump’s office announced he would be fly­ing to Las Vegas for a “major announce­ment” related to the pres­i­den­tial con­test. Trump had announced last spring he would not run for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion but had hinted as recently as last month that he might run for pres­i­dent as an independent.

What would he say in Las Vegas? Gin­grich advis­ers sug­gested Trump had sent “sig­nals” that he planned endorse the for­mer House speaker. The Gin­grich team began leak­ing word of an impend­ing endorse­ment to news orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing The Asso­ci­ated Press.

Nope. Reporters learned Thurs­day that Trump would be endors­ing Rom­ney instead.

Ear­lier, on a tour of a Las Vegas man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­ity, Gin­grich made clear he had got­ten the message.

“No,” the for­mer House speaker replied when asked if he was expect­ing Trump’s endorse­ment. He added that he was amazed at the atten­tion Trump was getting.

Rom­ney hasn’t always been Trump’s man.

In an inter­view with CNN last April, Trump dis­missed Rom­ney as a “small busi­ness guy” and sug­gested Bain Cap­i­tal, the ven­ture cap­i­tal firm where Rom­ney made his mil­lions, had bank­rupted com­pa­nies and destroyed jobs.

“He’d buy com­pa­nies, he’d close com­pa­nies, he’d get rid of jobs,” Trump said.

Rom­ney, for his part, turned down an invi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate in a pres­i­den­tial debate that Trump planned to mod­er­ate in Iowa in Decem­ber, lead­ing Trump to can­cel the event. And while Rom­ney, like most of the GOP hope­fuls, vis­ited Trump at his office in Man­hat­tan to dis­cuss cam­paign strat­egy, he slipped in and out of the build­ing with­out speak­ing to reporters.

Trump has played an unusu­ally promi­nent role in the pres­i­den­tial con­test since last spring, when he mused pub­licly about join­ing the Repub­li­can field.

He also stirred con­tro­versy and con­sid­er­able crit­i­cism dur­ing that time by openly ques­tion­ing the valid­ity of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s birth cer­tifi­cate, lend­ing cre­dence to the cho­rus of “birthers” who say Obama was not born in the United States and not eli­gi­ble to be pres­i­dent. The fuss pushed Obama to release a long-form ver­sion of his birth cer­tifi­cate, show­ing he was born in Hawaii in 1961.

The pres­i­dent dis­missed Trump as a “car­ni­val barker” and then mem­o­rably skew­ered him at the White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion din­ner in Wash­ing­ton, which Trump attended.

On Thurs­day, Rom­ney said he was hon­ored to receive the endorse­ment, but hoped even more to win the sup­port of Nevada vot­ers. The state holds pres­i­den­tial cau­cuses Saturday.

Trump, for his part, called Gin­grich “a won­der­ful per­son” but said he had decided to endorse Rom­ney two weeks ago.

“He’s a friend of mine, I like him a lot. I respect him a lot. But this is the way I went,” Trump said.

Trump said China pol­icy was a key fac­tor in his deci­sion to back Rom­ney. Trump has often accused China of manip­u­lat­ing its cur­rency and “cheat­ing” the U.S. — a theme Rom­ney has echoed on the cam­paign trail.

Trump, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire and host of a real­ity show where he famously pro­claims “You’re fired,” said he wasn’t wor­ried that his endorse­ment would hurt Rom­ney, another wealthy busi­ness­man whose oppo­nents have crit­i­cized as out-of touch.

“I really think he does con­nect, and he’s start­ing to con­nect really well,” Trump said.

Posted by AP News on Feb 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.