Scott Walker huddles with Trump

Scott Walker met with Donald Trump in Trump Tower for 45 minutes on Thursday.

Trump told POLITICO that Wisconsin’s Republican governor requested the meeting, and that it was an “enjoyable” discussion focused on “where the country is going” and “how poorly we’re perceived throughout the world.”


The businessman and TV personality added in a phone interview that he himself is “very, very seriously” considering his own run for president in 2016. He said he will make up his mind “sometime around June.”

A Walker spokeswoman confirmed the meeting.

Trump has met with several of the potential 2016 candidates, including a golf outing with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and a sit-down with former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

In 2011, Trump for a time publicly floated the idea he would run for president, generating a spate of media coverage until he ultimately pulled out.

“Everybody’s asking for my support, but I have my own decision to make,” he said Thursday. “I know ’em all, and I like many of them, but I have to make my decision.”

Trump donated $250,000 to the Republican Governors Association last year and another $100,000 in 2012. He maxed out to Walker’s reelection campaign last year with a $10,000 check. During the 2012 recall campaign, Walker visited with Trump in New York City, and the millionaire a few days later gave $15,000 to the Wisconsin Club for Growth, an outside group that helped defeat the recall.

Trump praised Walker for taking on public employee unions in Wisconsin. “I think he’s going to be a very interesting candidate,” he said. “I believed what he was doing was the right thing.”

Speaking on the phone Thursday before he flew to Florida for the weekend, Trump reiterated his criticisms of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, including the former Florida governor’s support for Common Core and his comment last year that people who enter the United States do so as an “act of love.”

Trump said he has an aggressive travel schedule coming up for the early states. He spoke at Iowa Rep. Steve King’s event for conservatives in Des Moines last month. On Sunday night, Trump will speak at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He’s going to Iowa next month for an agriculture summit and to speak at a county GOP dinner. Trump has also committed to return to Iowa in mid-May and to visit New Hampshire in March.

“People tend not to think I’m going to run,” he said of the likely Republican presidential candidates who have visited to seek his support. “So I may surprise a lot of people if I do.”