Where Did Make America Great Again Originate
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Brand America Dandy Once more."
The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White Firm were an inspiration built-in years earlier, when inappreciably anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States.
Information technology happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the day after Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, i that had some wondering whether a GOP president would e'er sit down in the Oval Role over again.
Simply on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the decision that his own moment was at hand.
And in typical fashion, the first matter he thought about was how to brand it.
One later on some other, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Neat." That i did non take the right ring. Then, "Make America Great." Simply that sounded like a slight to the land.
Then, it hit him: "Make America Great Again."
"I said, 'That is so practiced.' I wrote it down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. We have many lawyers. I accept got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Encounter if you lot can accept this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
5 days later on, Trump signed an awarding with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to utilize "Brand America Corking Again" for "political action committee services, namely, promoting public sensation of political issues 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 contrary," Trump said.
To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would accept to sand off its edges, become kinder and more than inclusive. "Make America Great Again" was divisive and astern-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded like a expiry wish.
But 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 disease our country had, and whether it's at the border, whether it'southward security, whether it's law and order or lack of law and lodge. Then, of course, y'all get to merchandise, 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 Great Again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'one thousand non your candidate. I think there is more right than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't remember we have to make America great. I think nosotros have to make America greater."
Her married man, erstwhile president Bill Clinton, went so far equally to declare it a racist dog whistle.
"I'chiliad actually onetime plenty to remember the good old days, and they weren't all that good in many means," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll give you America great once more' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don't you?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Permit's Brand America Great Again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a year ago.
"But he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His determination to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman's listen-set. "I think I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump System 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 not bad once more" into their own speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off cease-and-desist messages.
Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Make America Smashing Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
More than just a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic entrada. The one abiding, it often seemed, was "Brand America Great Once more."
"I didn't know it was going to take hold of on like it did. Information technology'due south been amazing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't yous say?"
At that place 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 bravado could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political car."
Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and advertising vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Manner Calendar week, no less.
"In the Style section, it was the ornamentation — what do y'all phone call that? — an accessory. They said the accompaniment of the yr. Yous know the hat. Yous'd run into people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing crimson hats," he exulted.
As is oftentimes the example, Trump's description is more than a footling hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "old-school" caps had become "the ironic must-accept fashion accessory of the summertime," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny ability to capture the current absurdist political moment."
None of which fazed the glory billionaire who had debuted the hats by wearing ane 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. Information technology was knocked off by 10 to one. Information technology was knocked off past others. But it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys i, that'south an advert."
However many hats he sold, what cannot exist disputed is that "Make America Swell Again" caught on. It was the near effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"It really inspired me," Trump said, "considering to me, information technology meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military forcefulness. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."
[When was America nifty? It depends on who y'all are.]
That kind of mission argument was something that Clinton's campaign — 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's chief political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to attain. Y'all can't deny him that. He was very focused from the first on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined upward the states he needed to win what mattered: the electoral college.
"In terms of galvanizing the market that he was talking to," Axelrod said, "he did information technology 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. " 'Continue America Great,' assertion point."
"Become me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Two minutes subsequently, 1 arrived.
"Will you trademark and register, if y'all would, if you like it — I think I like it, right? Do this: 'Keep America Great,' with an exclamation indicate. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.
"Got it," the lawyer replied.
That fleck of business organisation out of the manner, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never thought I'd be giving [y'all] my expression for 4 years [from now]," he said. "Merely I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be and then astonishing. It'southward the only reason I give information technology to yous. If I was, like, ambiguous nigh it, if I wasn't sure well-nigh what is going to happen — the country is going to be great."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it even mean?
"Being a peachy president has to do with a lot of things, just one of them is beingness a keen cheerleader for the state," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to prove the people every bit we build up our military, we're going to display our armed services.
"That military may come marching downwardly Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flight over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to exist showing our armed services," he added.
But Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship will not exist the ultimate tests of whether the country is "great once again."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the next 4 years: building stronger borders, keeping the land prophylactic confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Act, replacing information technology with something better, promoting excellence in applied science and science, investing in mod infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be up to the people for whom "Brand America Swell Over again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived up to his promise.
"I think they have to feel it," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the land is very important, but you notwithstanding have to produce the results."
"Honestly, you oasis't seen anything yet. Wait till yous encounter what happens, starting side by side Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great things."
Read more:
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Alice Crites contributed to this written 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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