Political Memes

He actually made several attempts at running for president before 2016, all of them ended in failure with 0 delegates because nobody took him seriously as an independent. At some point in time, either he or his political strategists must have figured out that running as an independent is doomed because you must convince people to vote in a way that they are not accustomed to, whereas if you win one of the two mainstream party nominations you automatically get party hardliners for free, no matter how bad of a candidate you are.

It didn't matter that Trump as he was in 2015 had nothing in common with either Democrats or Republicans at the time, he just picked the party that was most likely to fall into lockstep around him, and the Republican party was primed for a newcomer after two Obama defeats in a row. All it took was for him to make a serious run as a Republican and humiliate his competition out of the race, and suddenly the Republican party begins to warp their values and philosophy around him instead.

He only likes politics because it's a springboard to get him in front of a camera. Running and losing means he got to have his fun and spend some of his money saying outrageous things and having the media talk about him non stop leading up to the election. Winning just means 4 years of the media being mandated to hang on his every stupid word for all his press conferences and such. It's exhausting once you realize how simple his angle is and how society is hardwired to feed into his narcissistic tendencies with a nonstop media circus that only makes him stronger every time they report on him.