Tales from the Trail

The “major announcement”  Donald Trump will make   Thursday afternoon  in Las Vegas is that he is endorsing the presidential bid of  former House Speaker Newt Gingrich,  according to media reports.

The CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, KLAS  TV reports  sources confirmed  what Trump would say.  Earlier a Trump spokesman said only that the impending announcement would pertain to the campaign.

Trump’s announcement will come two days before the Republican  caucuses in  Nevada, the next state in the party’s presidential nominating contest.

The host of the TV show “The Apprentice” and the former Speaker of the House of Representatives met in Manhattan early in December.  “I want his endorsement,” Gingrich told a news conference  after their hour-long meeting at Trump’s Fifth Avenue office.

Trump flirted with a presidential run as a Republican  and was derided for pushing a discredited charge that President Barack Obama, a Democrat seeking re-election, might not have been born in the United States.

He left the Republican party in December, raising  the prospect of a potential third-party run for president.

UPDATED

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Andrew Burton (Trump speaks to members of the media after a meeting with Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich at Trump Towers on 5th Avenue in New York, December 5, 2011)