ABSTRACT
When Donald Trump announced in June 2015 that he was entering the race for the Republican presidential nomination, the overwhelming majority of observers perceived it to be another vanity candidacy that would end after Trump determined it had achieved its purpose of attracting sufficient attention or once he determined it would end in failure. Trump had, after all, previously declared his intention to run for the presidency in 2000 – when he ran for the nomination of the Reform Party – and again in 2012 when he considered running for the Republican nomination but ultimately did not, declaring that “business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.” Just as these flirtations with running for the highest political office in the US had come to nothing, so many expected a similar fate for this declaration.
