Make America Great Again Dump Trump Signs
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Brand America Swell Again."
The iv words that would assistance propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years before, when inappreciably anyone only Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the United states of america.
It happened on Nov. 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, 1 that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit down 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 kickoff thing he thought about was how to make information technology.
One afterward another, phrases popped into his caput. "We Will Make America Great." That one did non have the right ring. So, "Make America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the country.
And then, it striking him: "Make America Great Once more."
"I said, 'That is then good.' I wrote it downward," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. Nosotros have many lawyers. I take got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'See if you can accept this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Five days after, Trump signed an awarding with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to employ "Brand America Great Again" for "political action group 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, information technology was "much the opposite," Trump said.
To salvage itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would accept to sand off its edges, get kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Cracking Again" was divisive and astern-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded similar a decease wish.
Just Trump had seen something unlike 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 affliction our state had, and whether information technology's at the border, whether it'south security, whether it's constabulary and order or lack of constabulary and order. Then, of course, you become to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be skillful?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am correct at present, and I said, 'Make America Great Over again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'one thousand not your candidate. I think in that location is more than correct than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't retrieve nosotros accept to make America bully. I remember we have to make America greater."
Her husband, one-time president Bill Clinton, went and then far as to declare information technology a racist canis familiaris whistle.
"I'yard actually old plenty to recall the proficient 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 y'all America corking 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.Due west. Bush-league had used "Allow's Make America Peachy Again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did non know until about a year ago.
"But he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His decision to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman's mind-set. "I recollect I'grand 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 14, 2015, a month after Trump formally announced 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 idea. When his GOP primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America neat over again" into their ain speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.
Trump's scarlet trucker cap featuring the Brand America Great 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 ane constant, it often seemed, was "Make America Great Over again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on like information technology did. Information technology'due south been amazing," Trump said. "The hat, I judge, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't yous say?"
There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more than on "Make America Slap-up Once more" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.
"An appropriate icon for his failing entrada," the Washington Examiner'due south Philip Wegmann wrote in belatedly October. "The millions of hats will brand excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist blowing could overcome Clinton'south unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political motorcar."
Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and ad vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Way department — during Fashion Week, no less.
"In the Manner section, it was the ornament — what do you call that? — an accompaniment. They said the accessory of the year. You know the hat. You'd run into people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
As is often the case, Trump's clarification is more than than a niggling hyperbolic. What the newspaper really wrote was that the "old-school" caps had go "the ironic must-accept fashion accessory of the summer," favored past hipsters for their "uncanny power 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 nosotros sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.
"It was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by 10 to i. It was knocked off past others. But it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys 1, that's an advertizement."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Smashing Again" defenseless on. It was the most effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, information technology meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military machine force. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."
[When was America bully? 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-ballot campaign slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," according to an electronic mail from the account of entrada chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were up against was nothing brusque of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'due south chief political strategist. Trump "understood the marketplace that he was trying to accomplish. You tin 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 upwardly the states 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 single-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Post, Trump shared a flake of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you lot gear up?" he said. " 'Keep America Dandy,' exclamation betoken."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Two minutes afterwards, one arrived.
"Will you trademark and register, if y'all would, if y'all similar it — I call up I like it, right? Exercise this: 'Go along America Great,' with an assertion point. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Dandy,' " Trump said.
"Got it," the lawyer replied.
That fleck of concern out of the fashion, 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 so confident that we are going to exist, information technology is going to be so amazing. It'southward the merely reason I give information technology to you. If I was, like, ambiguous well-nigh information technology, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen — the state is going to be great."
All of which raises the questions: How tin can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it fifty-fifty mean?
"Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, only ane of them is being a nifty cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to bear witness the people as we build upwardly our military, we're going to display our military.
"That military may come marching downwards Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, nosotros're going to exist showing our military," he added.
But Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship will not be the ultimate tests of whether the country is "great again."
The president-elect has an aggressive to-practise list for the next iv years: building stronger borders, keeping the country prophylactic against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with something ameliorate, promoting excellence in technology and scientific discipline, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be upwardly to the people for whom "Make America Great Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to make up one's mind 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 country is very of import, but you however have to produce the results."
"Honestly, you haven't seen anything yet. Wait till y'all run into 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 study.
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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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