Buzzfeed’s excellent reporter McKay Coppins has a fascinating piece on what inspired Trump to run. In short, “the haters” had something to do with it. Apparently I deserve some of the blame:
Trump's Needy PresidencyAs the date of the announcement neared, aides observed in Trump a growing agitation about his prospective presidential bid. He hemmed and hawed, talked himself in circles, changed his plans by the hour. The whole un-Trumply display kind of freaked out the employees in his orbit. “I’ve never seen him like this before,” one longtime bodyguard fretted to a colleague.
One morning in early June, Nunberg recalled, he was sitting in Trump Tower as his boss read that day’s New York Post. There was a column by conservative writer Jonah Goldberg gleefully ridiculing the Apprentice star’s 2016 prospects. “He’s a more plausible candidate than, say, Honey Boo Boo,” it read, “but that’s mostly because of constitutional age limits.” When Trump finished, he set the paper down quietly on his desk.
“Why don’t they respect me, Sam?” Trump asked.