Today We Make America Great Again
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Make America Peachy Again."
The four words that would assistance propel Donald Trump to the White Firm were an inspiration born years before, when hardly anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the adjuration of office equally the 45th president of the United States.
It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the 24-hour interval after 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 Part again.
Just on the 26th floor of a gilded Manhattan tower that bears his proper noun, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at hand.
And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought virtually was how to brand it.
Ane after another, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Not bad." That one did not have the right ring. And so, "Make America Great." Just that sounded like a slight to the country.
And so, it hitting him: "Make America Smashing Again."
"I said, 'That is and so good.' I wrote it down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I accept a lot of lawyers in-house. We have many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Come across if yous tin take this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Mail service)
5 days later, Trump signed an awarding with the U.Southward. Patent and Trademark Part, in which he asked for exclusive rights to utilize "Make America Not bad Again" for "political action committee services, namely, promoting public awareness of political problems 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 salvage itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Great Again" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
Information technology sounded similar 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's at the border, whether it's security, whether it's law and order or lack of law and order. Then, of class, you lot get 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 Swell Again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm not your candidate. I recall there is more correct than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we accept to make America great. I think nosotros have to make America greater."
Her husband, quondam president Bill Clinton, went and then far as to declare it a racist domestic dog whistle.
"I'1000 actually old enough to remember the expert old days, and they weren't all that good in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll requite you America swell again' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it ways, don't y'all?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.Westward. Bush had used "Let'southward Make America Great Again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until virtually a year ago.
"But he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His conclusion to merits legal ownership reflected a businessman'south mind-prepare. "I retrieve I'1000 somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than 80 countries.
The trademark became effective on July fourteen, 2015, a month after Trump formally appear his entrada 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 thought. When his GOP primary 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 cease-and-desist letters.
Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Brand America Great Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Mail)
More just a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a cluttered campaign. The one constant, it often seemed, was "Make America Great Again."
"I didn't know it was going to take hold of on like it did. It's been amazing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you say?"
There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Ballot Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more than on "Make America Great Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.
"An appropriate icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in tardily October. "The millions of hats will make excellent keepsakes for those who idea his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'due south unimaginative and conventional just well-oiled political machine."
Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and advertizing vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Way section — during Fashion Week, no less.
"In the Style department, information technology was the ornament — what do you call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the twelvemonth. You know the chapeau. You lot'd meet people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing reddish hats," he exulted.
As is often the instance, Trump's description is more than than a niggling hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "old-schoolhouse" caps had go "the ironic must-accept way accessory of the summer," 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 entrada website were priced at $25.
"How many did we sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.
"Information technology was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by 10 to one. It was knocked off by others. Just it was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys ane, that'southward an ad."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Great Again" caught on. It was the near effective kind of political message, seize with teeth-sized and visceral.
"Information technology actually inspired me," Trump said, "considering to me, it meant jobs. It meant manufacture, and meant military strength. Information technology meant taking care of our veterans. Information technology 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 advice from Madison Avenue — struggled to articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election campaign slogan earlier settling on "Stronger Together," according to an email from the account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published past WikiLeaks.
What they were up against was aught 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 reach. You tin't deny him that. He was very focused from the start on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined up the states he needed to win what mattered: the electoral higher.
"In terms of galvanizing the marketplace that he was talking to," Axelrod said, "he did it single-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 you ready?" he said. " 'Proceed America Great,' assertion indicate."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Two minutes later, i arrived.
"Will yous trademark and annals, if you lot would, if yous like information technology — I recall I similar it, right? Practice this: 'Go along America Slap-up,' with an exclamation point. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Not bad,' " Trump said.
"Got information technology," the lawyer replied.
That bit of business out of the manner, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never thought I'd exist giving [y'all] my expression for four years [from at present]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be and so amazing. Information technology's the but reason I give information technology to yous. If I was, similar, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure 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 fifty-fifty hateful?
"Being a great president has to practice with a lot of things, but one of them is being a not bad cheerleader for the state," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to show the people as we build up our military, nosotros're going to display our military.
"That military machine may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I hateful, nosotros're going to be showing our armed services," he added.
Simply Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship will non be the ultimate tests of whether the country is "nifty again."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-do listing for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the land safe against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Human action, replacing it with something better, promoting excellence in technology and science, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, information technology will exist up to the people for whom "Make America Great Once again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived up to his promise.
"I call back they have to feel it," Trump acknowledged. "Existence a cheerleader or a salesman for the state is very important, but you nonetheless take to produce the results."
"Honestly, yous haven't seen annihilation all the same. Wait till you see what happens, starting next Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Smashing 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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