"I'm really honored and I'm really proud that I was able to do something that nobody else could do," Trump said.

Then he seemed ready to move on from a controversy that he had done much to stoke.

"Hopefully when I sit down to interviews people don't start talking about birth certificate, birth certificate, like they've been doing.  So I feel like I've accomplished something really really important and I am honored by it," he said.

Trump held court for nearly 30 minutes, and proves unsurprisingly adept at ducking questions.

Note: Trump is the father in-law of the Observer's publisher, Jared Kushner.

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The news was reported this morning by the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Last month, Giuliani spoke to the local G.O.P.'s Lincoln-Reagan Dinner, but aides were careful to characterize that visit as repaying some old debts to friends and supporters.

But the next visit would seem to give a greater indication that Giuliani is still seriously considering the race. The parties hosted by Lamontagne, who lost a Senate bid last year, are expressly designed to host potential presidential candidates. Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum have already attended events there; Herman Cain is doing one next week; and Newt Gingrich is booked for later in May.

In his remarks last month, Giuliani promised he had learned a lesson from his disastrous 2008 run, and assured the crowd that--if he were to run again--he would engage in the kind of down-home retail campaigning New Hampshirites have come to expect. Last time around, he effectively pulled out of the state and finished a distant fourth.

"Sometimes a candidate doesn't deserve a second chance," he wrote.

Cullen expressed many of the same complaints that others mentioned in my story last week--that Giuliani ran an above-the-fray campaign in a state that expects a lot of personal attention. As Cullen put it:

Giuliani's was the Potemkin Village of presidential campaigns: What looked like a campaign was just a facade for the cameras and national media. It was artifice, disrespectful of the process and the voters. Perhaps this is what campaigns in New York City are, where everything plays out on TV and in the tabloids, where no grassroots grow in the concrete jungle.

Most of the voters and political experts who I spoke with seemed to think the electorate could give Giuliani another chance, provided he was willing to put in the gripping-and-grinning required of New Hampshire candidates. At the Manchester G.O.P.'s Lincoln Reagan dinner last week, the former mayor did just that, working the room back and forth, to make sure everyone got a handshake and a photo.

But Cullen is not so forgiving. He mentions meeting Giuliani a half-dozen times and the mayor never appearing to have remembered him. Cullen seems to have taken it personally, and says he's written off the former mayor as a viable candidate.

Most of us know the experience of having had a bad first date. Usually both participants recognize it didn't work out, but sometimes the guy doesn't get the message, calls again, and needs to be told bluntly: Sorry, Rudy. You had your chance, and much as we respect your resume, we're just not interested in going out again.

It was a brief moment of forced gravity during an otherwise rollicking speech at the Manchester Republican Committee's annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner, in which the former mayor attacked President Obama for a host of foreign and domestic missteps, and implicitly undercut some of his potential opponents in a 2012 primary.

"Over the last week and a half, I've never witnessed a worse case of presidential decision-making," Giuliani said of the president's treatment of Libya. "Or lack of decision-making. Or conduct of foreign policy. Ever. And I worked for two presidents. And met probably the last five or six."

He tweaked the president for following France's lead in pushing for a no-fly zone, and accused him of being "afraid" and "timid" when dealing with China.

He made fun of the French military, joked that perhaps Obama thought he was dealing with Long Island and that Muammar Gaddafi was Italian--since it "ends in a vowel"--cracked jokes about wind and solar power, and concluded by saying that even Hillary Clinton would have been better than President Obama.

Giuliani also criticized the current Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, for the health care plan that he passed in Massachusetts. Giuliani said he knew the plan would cost much more than the estimates because he "ran a health care system" in New York, and the cost estimates were never correct.

After the speech, he offered Romney some free advice.

"I do think, and for his own good I say this, he's got to straighten this out. This will be a much bigger problem than people realize," he said.

"The biggest issue deep down is Obamacare. It's not just an economic issue. It's a philosophical issue. It's a freedom thing," he said. "[People] don't feel any differently if the state does it. His answer has to be, 'It was a mistake and I won't do it again.' And maybe even say I'll even go further to try to obliterate it because it turned out to be such a mistake."

But Giuliani, who finished a distant fourth in New Hampshire in 2008 and continues to demur on his own plans for the 2012 campaign, also engaged in a bit of self-criticism.

"If I could go back and re-do what I did four years ago, there are about 45 things i would have done differently, but I would have just spent more time here," he said.

Trump denied having any knowledge of the poll, and at first played coy on whether or not it was an indicator of any future political aspirations. Now, today on Fox and Friends, Trump said he was "seriously" considering throwing his hat in the ring in 2012, the New York Post reports.

"For the first time in my life, I'm actually thinking about it [running for president]," Trump told Fox News Channel. He added, "I see what's going on with this country and it's never been worse. What's happening is a disgrace."

When asked what party he would affiliate himself with, Trump said the Republican party.

The poll, which was first reported on by Time magazine on Monday, mentioned a variety of potential candidates and pairings, but 30 of the questions were about Trump. 

The potential Republican candidate today continued to deny that he had any part in the New Hampshire poll, but did mention that "I hear the results are amazing."

At the Observer offices, Why Tuesday? does not immediately seem to refer to election nights.

When you saw who it was, you couldn't help but double take: Inside Edition was really here.

"Some people are interested in getting at the real story," said Paul Boyd, who has been on-air for Inside Edition since 2001. "Just let the drama speak for itself. Everyone gets their news from different sources, so we're here to provide some compelling coverage from a different perspective."

Mr. Boyd was still giddy over a story he broke that got some traction on Primary Day: the woman who asked the question that prompted Hillary Clinton to cry was actually voting for Obama.

"As usual, a lot of the media did not report this correctly," he said.

"We had a sit-down interview with her today and she said she was voting for Obama."

She also had a very bad day.

"She's been getting threatening emails from people. People are accusing her that she's a plant. She's threatened for her life."

Mr. Boyd then spoke about the story in grander terms. "We're just trying to tell a story. It's just journalism."

After Media Mob concluded his interview, his cameraman added for good measure about the Obama event: "I'm still shocked as shit."

"Tonight belongs to you," Mr. Obama told the crowd in his concession speech. But, really, it belonged to Hillary Clinton, who pulled off a shock victory that put an abrupt end to Obama's momentum and re-established her as the Democratic frontrunner.

The obituaries written for her campaign in recent days now seem hopelessly premature.

The night's events had a disorientating effect upon the large crowd that turned up here at Nashua South High School, confident of an Obama victory.

As they filed out, many tried to put on a brave face. But their body language told a different story—one of dejection and confusion.

"I feel bad," Trisha Swonger, 48, of Merrimack said. "I feel like I should write Michelle Obama an apology. I wanted us to deliver a little better."

Swonger added that in conversations with female friends in the past 24 hours, she was "disappointed that a lot of women were swung by that little breakdown she (Clinton) had yesterday. I think we have to get over that as women."

21-year-old student Bill Cudney, of Brookline, N.H, said that New Hampshire was a "really tricky state. A lot of finicky people can change at the last minute."

Cudney said he was "disappointed with the result but optimistic about how things are going to go." His demeanor did not seem overly hopeful, however.

The crowd did at least have its spirits lifted by Obama's speech. Bringing back a slogan from his victorious 2004 Senate run, he led them in a chant of "Yes we can."

Those three words, Obama said, were "whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail through the darkest of nights." And, he asserted, they would "ring from coast to coast" during the rest of his campaign.

Obama was already looking ahead in the speech, making specific mention of the upcoming primary states of South Carolina and Nevada.

And, though he congratulated Clinton on her success, he also warned his audience that the "chorus of cynics will only grow louder and more dissonant" in the times ahead.

He told his supporters that they could become "the new majority who can lead this nation out of a long political darkness."

Tonight was itself a bleak time for his most passionate backers, however.

The first tremors of concern ran through the crowd streaming in to the cavernous gymnasium here just after 8 p.m., as early returns showed Obama lagging Clinton by two per cent and exit polls suggested the race was too close to call.

At 8.56 p.m., as the single giant video screen in the arena showed Clinton opening up a six per cent lead, an uneasy stillness settled over the crowd.

Dave Gourley, a 53-year-old computer programmer from Rye, N.H., said at that point that he was "very surprised" and that he had "expected it to be much more for Obama."

As it became apparent that a result was not going to be arrived at for some time, members of the initially feverish crowd pulled books or magazines from their pockets and settled in for a long night. Still, each diminution of Clinton's lead brought loud cheers while figures showing a restoration of that lead were met with silence.

Questions will inevitably arise as to why the polls were so wrong. Pundits seem destined to focus upon the same uncharacteristic show of emotion by Clinton yesterday that Trisha Swonger noticed influencing her friends.

Was that a reverse 'Muskie moment', presenting a more sympathetic side of the former First Lady? Or did her sharper attacks on Obama in recent days have an effect?

Either way, Obama's chances of winning the nomination have been dealt a significant blow by the famously unpredictable voters of New Hampshire.

In his speech, Obama insisted that a short time ago, "No one imagined we'd have accomplished what we did here tonight."

That may be true. But earlier today no-one, even in Clinton's team, imagined him going down to such a dramatic defeat.

So what happened in New Hampshire?

“I think people started to see the real difference between the candidates as she began drawing the contrasts and then they also heard her speak from her heart,” he said. “Those two things together stopped the momentum.”

When asked of the importance of the moment Monday when she choked up in a Portsmouth diner, Penn said, “Remember, these were voters who were with her before, and they took another look. It started with the debate, and then all the rallies and people saw her speak from her heart.”

I asked him if the possibility of an emotional, personal connection swaying voters back to Clinton didn’t run contrary to his emphasis on reaching voters by through policy issues.

“She won economy voters,” Penn said, before jumping off the line.