Donald Trump Announcement: Trump October Surprise Fails To Deliver

Billionaire Donald Trump made an announcement on Wednesday that will go down in the annals as just another instance of self-aggrandizement from the shameless self-promoter. Earlier this week, Trump declared that he would makes a revelation about Barack Obama that could alter the course of the presidential election. But Trump's announcement turned out to be a big dud, and not the big bomb bombshell many were anticipating. 

Trump guaranteed that he would stay in the spotlight for at least another week by calling on Obama to get the universities he attended to release the president's college applications and transcripts. The Donald also asked to see Obama's passport application. If Obama does this by October 31, Trump said he would write a check in the amount of $5 million out to a charity of Obama's choice. 

Earlier in the campaign season, Trump kept a gullible media in suspense, as he supposedly dithered back and forth in deciding whether he was going to run for president. After receiving mountains of media attention and promotion for his show, Celebrity Apprentice, Trump announced that he would not run for president. Shocker.

Shortly thereafter, Trump suggested that he had investigators in Hawaii — Obama's birth state — who were unearthing evidence calling into question Obama's natural-born citizen status. Birthers have long-claimed that Obama was not born in the United States, and is therefore not constitutionally qualified to be president. Those claims turned out to be unfounded, although Trump's and other birthers' calls for Obama to release his long-form birth certificate prompted the president to eventually release the certificate, which indicated he had indeed been born in Hawaii.

Regarding today's announcement, speculation has swirled wildly. As PolicyMic's Ashley Howe originally reported,

Douglas Kass, an investor who appears on CNBC’s talk show Squawkbox, tweeted on Tuesday that "Donald Trump will announce that he has unearthed divorce papers between the Prez and his wife." I'm sure no one saw this coming!

Trump tweeted earlier this morning that this, and all other speculation concerning his announcement were wrong. Too bad for him. That speculation was far more scintillating than what Trump actually put forth. 

FULL STATEMENT FROM DONALD TRUMP