A New York Times report about the rise of Donald Trump’s political ambitions indicates that Trump was wounded by President Obama’s ridicule of him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner and that the experience “accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world.” The report paints Trump’s efforts to insert himself into American politics as in many ways simply “a desire to be taken seriously,” though Trump denied to the Times that he was burned by Obama’s 2011 roast. (Though if the report is correct, and Trump does become president, he can channel the Joker when taking the baton from Obama on Inauguration Day.)
Ultimately, the Times says that Trump elected to skip a 2012 campaign because he wasn’t yet ready to give up reality television, and then unsuccessfully tried to maneuver a major role for himself inside the Romney campaign instead. After being rebuffed at that, he began to focus on raising his profile as an important GOP donor, and the rest is recent history.
