Ninety Days Later: Donald Trump’s Romp Through 2012 Politics (VIDEO)

Donald Trump
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Well that’s the end of that chapter. Just about three months to the day since he jumped into the presidential fray with his surprise appearance at CPAC, Donald Trump put an end to his crash course through the presidential field by pulling out of the race before he ever officially got in.

What’s left is a coarse legacy of racial dogwhistling and policy gaffes that leave Trump basically where he started: a less than serious real estate investor with a reality show. The rest of us are left with a (more) racialized election and sheepish press corps. Here’s a look back at what Trump wrought before he decided to pick up the remaining shreds of his dignity and go home.

Watch — the Trump “candidacy” in a nutshell:

Dogwhistler-In-Chief

Hey, remember when the birther thing was just a crackpot theory undeserving of presidential attention? Us neither. Undoubtedly the biggest thing Trump brought to the playing field was something very old: the idea that President Obama has been hiding the truth of his African birth from the American people.

The attachment to birtherism certainly gave Trump a poll boost, but it was his fascination with every conceivable Obama conspiracy theory that really crowned him as the nation’s best-known racialist.

Obama needed a white man to write his first book for him, Trump said. Obama needed politically correct admissions officers to get him into the Ivy League, Trump suggested.

For his part, Trump was shocked, simply shocked that anyone could suggest a racial component to his campaign. Citing his “great relationships” with “the blacks,” Trump reminded his critics that one of the winners of his reality show was black, which he said clearly absolved him of any racism, ever. Too bad one of the other African American contestants on The Apprentice remembered the experience as less than entirely tolerant.

An Embarrassment And Riches

Under-reported at the height of Trumpmania was how poor a conservative Republican he actually was. Not only was he once a major Democratic donor, he once wrote a book that included his love for Canadian healthcare and support for a massive tax increase on the rich. And he trashed the budget proposal from Republican superstar Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

He failed to connect with some social conservatives, too. He appeared to have no understanding of the basics of the abortion fight, even as he painted himself as ardently pro-life.

What he was good at was talking about how rich he is (though he was never willing to actually confirm how rich he is, despite a promise to release his tax returns). He was also good at dropping f-bombs when talking about China.

He’s Up, He’s Down

But for a while there Trump had a pretty good run of it in the polls. A CNN poll in April had him tied for first with the also-not-running-anymore Mike Huckabee. Another even put him ahead of the whole GOP field by nine points.

Much of the Trump bump was likely a side effect of the lameness of the other Republican contenders, making it almost inevitable that he would flame out. And flame out he did — once Obama released his long-form birth certificate, following shortly by the killing of America’s most wanted man, Trump’s numbers plummeted.

But not before he was eviscerated on the national stage by Obama and his comedy sidekick at the White House Corespondents Association Dinner, SNL’s Seth Meyers. The pair absolutely ripped Trump before the C-SPAN cameras and the assembled press corps. Trump couldn’t take the heat and started whining about the jokes until Osama bin Laden was killed and no one much cared about Trump’s hurt feelings anymore.

In the end, even when he was out, Trump wasn’t down. In the release announcing his decision, Trump said: “I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election.”

The world may never know (yes, it kind of will).

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