I Will Make America Great Again.
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Brand America Great Over again."
The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years before, when inappreciably anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of part equally the 45th president of the United States.
It happened on November. 7, 2012, the day afterwards Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Office again.
But on the 26th flooring of a gilded Manhattan belfry that bears his proper noun, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at paw.
And in typical fashion, the first thing he idea about was how to brand it.
1 afterward some other, phrases popped into his caput. "We Will Brand America Great." That one did not accept the right band. Then, "Brand America Bang-up." But that sounded like a slight to the country.
And then, information technology hit him: "Make America Great Once more."
"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote it down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-firm. We accept many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Meet if yous tin have this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Mail service)
Five days later, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Make America Dandy Over again" for "political action committee services, namely, promoting public awareness of political bug and fundraising in the field of politics." He enclosed a $325 registration fee.
His was a vision that ran against the conventional wisdom of the time — in fact, it was "much the opposite," Trump said.
To salve itself, the Republican institution was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, go kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Peachy Again" was divisive and astern-looking. Information technology made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded like a death wish.
But Trump had seen something different in the country, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.
"I felt that jobs were hurting," he said. "I looked at the many types of illness our country had, and whether it'southward at the edge, whether it'south security, whether it's constabulary and social club or lack of law and gild. Then, of course, you go to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Bang-up Again.' "
Democrats slammed information technology.
"If yous're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm not your candidate. I think there is more right than wrong," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't recall we take to make America great. I call back we have to make America greater."
Her husband, former president Nib Clinton, went so far equally to declare it a racist dog whistle.
"I'yard really old plenty to remember the good sometime days, and they weren't all that adept in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That bulletin where 'I'll give yous America great again' is if you're a white Southerner, you lot know exactly what it means, don't you?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Let's Make America Not bad Over again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did non know until about a year ago.
"Just he didn't trademark information technology," Trump said of Reagan.
His decision to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman's mind-set. "I think I'1000 somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organisation lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than 80 countries.
The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a month after Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was actually using it for the purposes spelled out in his application.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America great once again" into their own speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.
Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Make America Great Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
More than just a chapeau
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one constant, it oftentimes seemed, was "Make America Bang-up Again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on like it did. It'south been amazing," Trump said. "The lid, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you say?"
There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Committee filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Make America Great Over again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.
"An advisable icon for his declining campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in belatedly October. "The millions of hats will make excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist blowing could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional only well-oiled political machine."
Trump saw the hats every bit a fundraising and advertizement vehicle. He was thrilled when his entrada headgear landed in the New York Times Style department — during Way Week, no less.
"In the Style section, it was the ornament — what exercise you lot call that? — an accompaniment. They said the accessory of the year. You lot know the chapeau. Yous'd meet people going to the fanciest assurance at the Waldorf Astoria wearing carmine hats," he exulted.
As is oftentimes the instance, Trump's clarification is more than a little hyperbolic. What the paper actually wrote was that the "old-school" caps had become "the ironic must-have way accessory of the summer," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny ability to capture the current absurdist political moment."
None of which fazed the celebrity billionaire who had debuted the hats by wearing i during a July 2015 trip to the Mexican border — or the legions of supporters who raced to snap them up. Trump had designed them himself, he said. The basic models sold through his campaign website were priced at $25.
"How many did we sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.
"It was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by 10 to 1. It was knocked off past others. But it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that'due south an ad."
However many hats he sold, what cannot exist disputed is that "Make America Great Once again" caught on. Information technology was the most constructive kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"Information technology actually inspired me," Trump said, "considering to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant armed services strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant and so much."
[When was America keen? Information technology depends on who you are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's entrada — for all its poll testing and high-priced advice from Madison Avenue — struggled to articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a full general-election campaign slogan earlier settling on "Stronger Together," co-ordinate to an electronic mail from the business relationship of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were up against was nothing short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'south chief political strategist. Trump "understood the marketplace that he was trying to accomplish. You can't deny him that. He was very focused from the showtime on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined up u.s. he needed to win what mattered: the electoral college.
"In terms of galvanizing the marketplace that he was talking to," Axelrod said, "he did it unmarried-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Post, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Great,' exclamation point."
"Become me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
2 minutes later, ane arrived.
"Volition you trademark and register, if you would, if you like it — I retrieve I like information technology, correct? Do this: 'Proceed America Great,' with an assertion point. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.
"Got it," the lawyer replied.
That bit of business out of the mode, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never thought I'd be giving [yous] my expression for four years [from now]," he said. "But I am and then confident that we are going to be, information technology is going to be so amazing. It's the only reason I requite it to you. If I was, like, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure nigh what is going to happen — the state is going to be great."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it fifty-fifty hateful?
"Being a peachy president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the land," Trump said. "And we're going to prove the people as we build up our military, we're going to brandish our military.
"That military may come marching downward Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York Urban center and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military," he added.
Simply Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship volition not be the ultimate tests of whether the land is "slap-up once again."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the adjacent 4 years: building stronger borders, keeping the state condom confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Act, replacing it with something better, promoting excellence in engineering science and scientific discipline, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be up to the people for whom "Brand America Great Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to make up one's mind whether the 45th president has lived upwardly to his promise.
"I call back they accept to feel information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the state is very important, only you nonetheless have to produce the results."
"Honestly, you haven't seen anything still. Wait till yous see what happens, starting next Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great things."
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Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-came-up-with-make-america-great-again/2017/01/17/fb6acf5e-dbf7-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html
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