Help Make America Great Again Vote Democrat
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Make America Great Over again."
The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White Firm were an inspiration born years before, when hardly anyone merely Trump himself could imagine him taking the adjuration of role equally the 45th president of the Us.
It happened on Nov. seven, 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 crunch, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Office over again.
Only on the 26th flooring of a gold Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his ain moment was at hand.
And in typical fashion, the showtime thing he idea about was how to make it.
One later some other, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Corking." That one did not accept the correct ring. And then, "Make America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the country.
And then, information technology hit him: "Make America Great Again."
"I said, 'That is then skillful.' I wrote information technology 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, 'See if you lot can have this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Five days subsequently, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to utilise "Make America Smashing 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 contrary," Trump said.
To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, go kinder and more than inclusive. "Make America Cracking Once more" was divisive and astern-looking. It fabricated no nod to variety or civility or progress.
It sounded like a expiry wish.
Just Trump had seen something unlike 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 land had, and whether it'due south at the border, whether it'south security, whether it's law and order or lack of law and guild. So, of course, you go to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would exist expert?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am correct now, and I said, 'Make America Dandy Again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If yous're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'k not your candidate. I call up there is more right than incorrect," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't remember nosotros take to brand America neat. I think we have to make America greater."
Her husband, old president Beak Clinton, went so far every bit to declare it a racist dog whistle.
"I'm really erstwhile enough to remember the good old days, and they weren't all that good in many means," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That bulletin where 'I'll requite you America great again' is if yous're a white Southerner, yous know exactly what it means, don't you?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Let's Make America Dandy Over again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did non know until near a year ago.
"Merely he didn't trademark information technology," Trump said of Reagan.
His determination to claim legal buying reflected a businessman'south mind-set. "I think I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Arrangement lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upwards of 800 trademarks in more than 80 countries.
The trademark became constructive on July 14, 2015, a month afterward Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was actually using it for the purposes spelled out in his awarding.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP master rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "brand America great again" into their own speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.
Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Make America Bully Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Postal service)
More than only a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The i abiding, information technology often seemed, was "Make America Great Again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on like information technology did. It's been astonishing," Trump said. "The hat, I gauge, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't y'all say?"
At that place were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Brand America Great Over again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or idiot box ads.
"An appropriate icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats will make splendid keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'south unimaginative and conventional only well-oiled political motorcar."
Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and advertizing vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Fashion Week, no less.
"In the Style department, information technology was the ornament — what do you call that? — an accompaniment. They said the accompaniment of the year. You lot know the hat. You'd see people going to the fanciest assurance at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
Equally is often the instance, Trump's description is more than a piddling hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "quondam-schoolhouse" caps had become "the ironic must-have way accompaniment of the summer," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny power to capture the electric current absurdist political moment."
None of which fazed the celebrity billionaire who had debuted the hats by wearing one 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 bones 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 ane. It was knocked off by others. But it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that's an advertizement."
Even so many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Brand America Great Again" defenseless on. Information technology was the most constructive kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"It really inspired me," Trump said, "considering to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant war machine forcefulness. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so 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 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," co-ordinate to an email from the account of entrada chairman John Podesta that was published past WikiLeaks.
What they were upward against was nothing brusk of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's main 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 upwardly 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 it single-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Mail, Trump shared a chip of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Great,' exclamation point."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
2 minutes later, one arrived.
"Will yous trademark and register, if y'all would, if y'all similar it — I think I like it, right? Exercise this: 'Keep America Groovy,' with an assertion point. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.
"Got it," the lawyer replied.
That bit of business concern out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never idea I'd be giving [you lot] my expression for four years [from now]," he said. "But I am and so confident that we are going to be, it is going to exist then amazing. It'due south the simply reason I requite it to yous. If I was, like, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen — the land is going to be groovy."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness exist measured and sensed? What does it fifty-fifty hateful?
"Existence a great president has to do with a lot of things, but ane of them is existence a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people every bit we build up our military, we're going to display our military machine.
"That armed forces may come marching down Pennsylvania Artery. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our armed services," he added.
But Trump best-selling that slogans and showmanship volition not be the ultimate tests of whether the land is "great once more."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-exercise listing for the next iv years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Human activity, replacing it with something ameliorate, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in mod infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be up to the people for whom "Make America Great Once more" was a covenant, non a slogan, to determine 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 important, simply y'all nonetheless take to produce the results."
"Honestly, you haven't seen annihilation yet. Look till yous see what happens, starting next Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Nifty 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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