Uses Morning Joe to float 2016 run and admit earlier flirtations tested the waters

On January 12, 2015, Trump phoned into MSNBC’s Morning Joe and, asked yet again whether he would run for president, acknowledged that in previous cycles he had “tested the waters” by talking about a bid while keeping his reality-television platform, then insisted that this time he was seriously considering a 2016 run. Salon’s same-day write-up and later retrospectives on his Morning Joe relationship quote him saying he thought he could “do very well” as president and that he would make a decision “fairly quickly,” even as the segment underscored how he used cable-news hits to keep his name in the race, build hype around his supposed intentions, and treat presidential flirtations as both publicity and leverage long before his formal June 2015 campaign launch.

"I think I could do very well, and I think I could do more than well." — January 12, 2015 call-in to MSNBC’s Morning Joe, during which Trump discussed the possibility of a 2016 presidential run and contrasted it with his past cycles of flirtation.