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.
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