IM Going to Make America Great Again
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on January. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Make America Great Again."
The iv words that would aid 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 office as the 45th president of the U.s.a..
Information technology happened on Nov. seven, 2012, the day after Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race confronting 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 floor of a aureate Manhattan tower that bears his proper name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at mitt.
And in typical fashion, the starting time thing he thought well-nigh was how to make information technology.
One after some other, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Great." That ane did not take the right ring. And so, "Make America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the country.
And then, it hit him: "Make America Smashing Again."
"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote information technology downward," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. We accept many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'See if you can accept this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Mail)
Five days later, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Part, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Brand America Great Once again" for "political activeness commission services, namely, promoting public awareness of political issues and fundraising in the field of politics." He enclosed a $325 registration fee.
His was a vision that ran confronting the conventional wisdom of the time — in fact, it was "much the opposite," Trump said.
To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, get kinder and more than inclusive. "Make America Great Over again" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded like a death wish.
Merely Trump had seen something different in the land, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.
"I felt that jobs were hurting," he said. "I looked at the many types of affliction our country had, and whether it'southward at the edge, whether it'south security, whether it's police force and order or lack of law and order. And so, of course, you become to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would exist good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Cracking Again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm not your candidate. I think there is more right than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we have to make America groovy. I think we take to make America greater."
Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist dog whistle.
"I'm actually old enough to remember the skillful one-time days, and they weren't all that good in many means," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll requite you America keen again' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it ways, don't you?"
The slogan itself was non entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Let'southward Make America Great Again" in their 1980 entrada — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a year agone.
"Simply he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His decision to merits legal ownership reflected a businessman's heed-set. "I think I'yard somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than lxxx countries.
The trademark became effective on July xiv, 2015, a month after Trump formally appear his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was actually using information technology for the purposes spelled out in his application.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his thought. When his GOP main rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America bang-up once again" into their own speeches, Trump'due south lawyers fired off terminate-and-desist letters.
Trump'due south ruby-red trucker cap featuring the Make America Bully Once more slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Mail service)
More than than merely a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one constant, it often seemed, was "Make America Smashing Again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on like it did. Information technology's been astonishing," Trump said. "The hat, I gauge, 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 Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.
"An appropriate icon for his declining campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats will make excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'due south unimaginative and conventional just well-oiled political machine."
Trump saw the hats every bit a fundraising and advertisement vehicle. He was thrilled when his entrada headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Fashion Week, no less.
"In the Style department, it was the ornamentation — what do you lot telephone call that? — an accompaniment. They said the accessory of the year. Yous know the lid. You'd see people going to the fanciest assurance at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
Every bit is often the example, Trump's description is more than than a piffling hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "old-school" caps had become "the ironic must-have mode accessory of the summer," favored past 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 1 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 nosotros sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.
"It was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by 10 to one. It was knocked off past others. But information technology was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that's an ad."
Nevertheless many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Cracking Once again" caught on. It was the almost constructive kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, information technology meant jobs. Information technology meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant and then much."
[When was America great? It depends on who you are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's campaign — for all its poll testing and loftier-priced communication from Madison Avenue — struggled to articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a full general-election campaign slogan earlier settling on "Stronger Together," according to an e-mail from the business relationship of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were up confronting was zero brusk of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'due south primary political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to reach. You lot can't deny him that. He was very focused from the outset on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined upwardly the states he needed to win what mattered: the electoral higher.
"In terms of galvanizing the market that he was talking to," Axelrod said, "he did it unmarried-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Postal service, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are y'all ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Great,' exclamation point."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Ii minutes subsequently, one arrived.
"Will you lot trademark and annals, if you would, if you like it — I call up I similar information technology, right? Do this: 'Proceed America Great,' with an exclamation point. With and without an exclamation. 'Continue America Great,' " Trump said.
"Got information technology," the lawyer replied.
That bit of business organisation out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never idea I'd be giving [you] my expression for iv years [from now]," he said. "Only I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be and then amazing. Information technology's the only reason I requite it to you. If I was, similar, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen — the country is going to be great."
All of which raises the questions: How tin greatness be measured and sensed? What does it even hateful?
"Being a great president has to practise with a lot of things, but ane of them is being a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as nosotros build up our military, we're going to display our military.
"That military machine may come up marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That armed services may be flight over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military," he added.
But Trump best-selling that slogans and showmanship will non exist the ultimate tests of whether the country is "keen again."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the next iv years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Act, replacing it with something meliorate, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be up to the people for whom "Make America Cracking Again" was a covenant, non a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived up to his promise.
"I call back they take to feel information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the land is very important, only y'all still have to produce the results."
"Honestly, y'all haven't seen annihilation yet. Wait till you meet what happens, starting adjacent Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Nifty things."
Read more:
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'Finally. Someone who thinks like me.'
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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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