CPAC, Feb 2011

I always thought that the whole Donald Trump as President meme was a ridiculous one trumped up by The Donald to not only feed his gargantuan ego, but to drive ratings for his fairly lame reality show. The notion that he would ever actually run or go through all the humiliating hoops a candidate had to do to run was unthinkable.

But apparently Donald Trump is stupid enough that he was thinking about it. And the fact that he didn't actually submit himself to the rigors of a presidential campaign apparently has everything to do with NBC suits:

NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt took the stage with NBC Entertainment President Jennifer Salke and President of Alternative and Late Night Programming Paul Telegdy to talk about their position on Trump's controversial behavior this past year.[..]

When asked about Trump's remarks during the presidential race and if they ever considered stepping in, Greenblatt replied: "That's a good question. I don't really know the answer to it. We live in this country where you can sort of say anything you want as long as you're not harming people. He's got a political belief system and we talk to him all the time, but I really don't think that what he's doing in his personal life is going to corrupt what's happening on the show. That said, if he sort of becomes somehow hurtful or says or does things that cross a line, I guess we would figure out what to do about that."

Telegdy added: "He keeps a lot of publicists very busy, but so far we're fine."

According to Greenblatt, the public has gotten off lucky regarding Trump in the media. "We talked him out of running for president. Wasn't that good enough?" he jokingly asked the room of reporters.

I guess it's a shame that NBC executives don't think that it's harming people to be as openly racist to allow a birther on their airwaves.