Campaign Sign Make America Great Again Vote Republican
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Make America Cracking Again."
The four words that would assistance propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years earlier, when hardly anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the adjuration of office as the 45th president of the U.s.a..
It happened on November. 7, 2012, the day after Hand Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crunch, ane that had some wondering whether a GOP president would always sit in the Oval Office again.
But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his ain moment was at hand.
And in typical fashion, the first matter he thought about was how to make information technology.
I after another, phrases popped into his head. "Nosotros Will Make America Great." That 1 did not have the correct ring. Then, "Brand America Corking." But that sounded similar a slight to the country.
And and so, information technology hit him: "Brand America Great Again."
"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote information technology down," 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, 'Run into if you can have this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Five days afterwards, Trump signed an application with the U.Southward. Patent and Trademark Function, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Make America Slap-up Again" for "political action group 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 against 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, become kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Corking Again" was divisive and astern-looking. It made no nod to diverseness or civility or progress.
It sounded similar a death wish.
Just Trump had seen something different in the country, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.
"I felt that jobs were pain," he said. "I looked at the many types of disease our state had, and whether it's at the border, whether information technology'due south security, whether it's law and order or lack of police and guild. And then, of form, you get to merchandise, and I said to myself, 'What would be skilful?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Groovy Again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm not your candidate. I call up there is more correct than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we accept to make America neat. I think we have to make America greater."
Her husband, former president Neb Clinton, went so far as to declare information technology a racist canis familiaris whistle.
"I'm really old plenty to remember the proficient former days, and they weren't all that proficient in many means," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll requite you America neat once more' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it ways, don't you?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.Due west. Bush had used "Let'south Make America Great Again" in their 1980 entrada — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a twelvemonth agone.
"Just he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His determination to merits legal ownership reflected a businessman's mind-prepare. "I call back I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than than eighty countries.
The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a calendar month afterwards Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was actually using information technology for the purposes spelled out in his awarding.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP principal rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America great again" into their own speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off finish-and-desist letters.
Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Make America Swell Again slogan was ubiquitious during the entrada. (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 "Make America Smashing Again."
"I didn't know it was going to take hold of on like it did. It's been amazing," Trump said. "The lid, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you say?"
At that place were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his entrada was spending more on "Make America Great Over again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television set ads.
"An appropriate icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner'due south Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats volition brand first-class keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional simply well-oiled political car."
Trump saw the hats equally a fundraising and advertising vehicle. He was thrilled when his entrada headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Fashion Week, no less.
"In the Style section, information technology was the ornament — what practise you telephone call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the twelvemonth. Y'all know the hat. Y'all'd see people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
As is often the case, Trump's description is more than a niggling hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "quondam-schoolhouse" caps had get "the ironic must-have way 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 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 one. It was knocked off by others. But it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that's an ad."
All the same many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Great Again" defenseless on. It was the most effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"Information technology actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant war machine force. It meant taking intendance of our veterans. It meant so much."
[When was America great? It depends on who y'all are.]
That kind of mission argument was something that Clinton'due south 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-ballot campaign slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," according 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 marketplace that he was trying to reach. Yous can't deny him that. He was very focused from the start on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the pop vote, Trump lined upwardly the states he needed to win what mattered: the balloter college.
"In terms of galvanizing the market that he was talking to," Axelrod said, "he did it single-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Post, Trump shared a chip of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you lot ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Dandy,' exclamation bespeak."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
2 minutes later, i arrived.
"Will yous trademark and register, if you would, if you like it — I think I like it, right? Do this: 'Keep America Neat,' with an assertion bespeak. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.
"Got it," the lawyer replied.
That scrap of business out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never thought I'd be giving [you] my expression for four years [from at present]," he said. "But I am and then confident that we are going to be, it is going to be so amazing. Information technology's the only reason I requite it to yous. If I was, similar, ambiguous most 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 can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it fifty-fifty hateful?
"Being a dandy president has to do with a lot of things, but i of them is being a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as we build upwardly our armed services, we're going to display our war machine.
"That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That war machine may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our war machine," he added.
But Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship will not be the ultimate tests of whether the state is "smashing over again."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-practise listing for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Deed, replacing it with something amend, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be upward to the people for whom "Make America Cracking Once again" was a covenant, non a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived up to his hope.
"I think they have to feel it," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, but you nevertheless accept to produce the results."
"Honestly, you haven't seen anything however. Wait till you run across what happens, starting next Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Bully 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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