Donald Trump's latest flirtation with running for president has ended like his previous ones did, in 1988 and 2000, with him saying that he's not going to do it after all. The real estate mogul and reality TV star announced Monday (May 16th) that he'd decided against running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, while still insisting that he could have won.

 Although Trump had previously spoken about revealing his decision or plans for an announcement on the May 22nd finale of Celebrity Apprentice, he instead announced that he wouldn't be running on Monday (May 16th) at a meeting of advertising executives gathered to hear about NBC's fall lineup, saying, "I will not be running for president as much as I'd like to." NBC had reportedly been pressing Trump for a decision, and had said a day earlier when announcing that Celebrity Apprentice would be returning that Trump would be replaced with another host if he decided to run.

 Trump's office also released a statement in which Trump said he was confident he could have won the GOP nomination and the general election against President Obama, but explained, "Ultimately, however, business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector."

 Since soon after he began his public consideration of running for president earlier this year, Trump made birtherism, the repeatedly debunked belief that Obama wasn't born in the United States, his signature issue. Several polls showed Trump near the top of the polls among GOP voters, although there were also polls showing a majority of Americans saying they'd never vote for him. After weeks of media attention given to Trump and his birther issue, Obama finally directed that his long-form birth certificate. It showed, just as the official short-form certificate that was released during the 2008 presidential campaign did, that he was born in Hawaii. Additionally, within days, Obama mocked the birth certificate issue and Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and Osama bin Laden was killed. After that, Trump's poll support began to fall. 

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