Donald Trump trademarked 'Make America Great Again' the month Romney lost in 2012

(Image credit: Craig Lassig/AFP/Getty Images)

published 3 March 2016

If Donald Trump is a "con man," as Marco Rubio likes to say, he's playing one helluva long con. Trump's rapid rise in the polls and success in the GOP primaries has caught Republicans and political observers off-guard, but the real estate mogul has been planning his conquest of the GOP nomination fight and, he hopes, the presidency since at least November 2012, the month Mitt Romney lost to President Obama — and Trump trademarked his slogan "Make America Great Again," The Wall Street Journal reports, citing federal records.

In 2013, Trump spoke at CPAC, and he campaigned for Rep. Steve King (R) in first-caucus-state Iowa a year later. Between 2012 and June 2015, he donated more than $1 million to Republican candidates and affiliated groups. Maybe nobody saw Trump's political success coming because he has been talking about running for president since at least 1988, when he told Oprah Winfrey that if he ever ran, he would probably win. He did briefly throw his hat in the ring in 2000, as a Reform Party candidate, but the 16 years since have been filled with feints widely viewed as publicity stunts.

Rush Limbaugh, Trump's longtime golfing buddy, said on his radio show Wednesday that looking back, "this is something Trump has been planning for years." While golfing, Trump would ask "pretty focused and intense" questions about politics, he said, but "at no point did I ever think, 'My God, this guy sounds like he's thinking of running.' I just thought it was somebody that was deeply interested and talking about things that you don't normally hear him talk about in public. But now looking back on everything that's happened, I think two or three years ago he was planning this."

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Trump's advisers say that Trump has been toying with the idea for more than a few years. "I don't think people realized he has always had presidential aspirations," Sam Nunberg, a GOP strategist who advised Trump from 2013 until August 2015, told The Journal. "He knows the voters he attracts. He knew it from the beginning." Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, explained the attraction: "He likes that he's making history. His likes that his name is up in lights.... And he's having fun." You can read more about Trump's long game at The Wall Street Journal.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.