Trump Lets Make Our Famers Great Again
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on January. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Make America Peachy Over again."
The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years before, when hardly anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office every bit the 45th president of the U.s..
It 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 crunch, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Part over again.
Simply on the 26th floor of a gold Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at hand.
And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought about was how to make it.
One after another, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Great." That one did non have the right band. Then, "Brand America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the state.
And then, it hit him: "Make America Bully Again."
"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote it downwardly," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. Nosotros take many lawyers. I take got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Run across if you can have this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Five days later, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Function, in which he asked for sectional rights to utilize "Make America Great 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 fourth dimension — in fact, information technology was "much the opposite," Trump said.
To save itself, the Republican institution was convinced, the GOP would accept to sand off its edges, become kinder and more than inclusive. "Brand America Great Over again" was divisive and astern-looking. It fabricated no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded like a expiry wish.
Merely Trump had seen something unlike in the land, 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 edge, whether it'southward security, whether it's law and guild or lack of law and order. Then, of form, yous get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would exist practiced?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Great Once more.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'yard not your candidate. I think there is more right than incorrect," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't call up we accept to brand America not bad. I call up we accept to brand America greater."
Her husband, former president Nib Clinton, went so far equally to declare it a racist canis familiaris whistle.
"I'k actually quondam plenty to remember the skilful old days, and they weren't all that practiced in many means," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That bulletin where 'I'll give you America not bad 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 Great Again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did non know until well-nigh a year ago.
"Just he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His determination to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman'south mind-set. "I think I'one thousand somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upwardly of 800 trademarks in more than 80 countries.
The trademark became constructive on July 14, 2015, a month after Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was really using it for the purposes spelled out in his application.
Having won the trademark, Trump was ambitious 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'due south lawyers fired off stop-and-desist letters.
Trump'due south red trucker cap featuring the Brand America Not bad Again slogan was ubiquitious during the entrada. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
More than than simply a chapeau
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one constant, information technology often seemed, was "Make America Great Again."
"I didn't know it was going to grab on like it did. It'southward been amazing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't y'all say?"
At that place were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Committee filings showed that his campaign was spending more than on "Brand America Great Over again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.
"An appropriate icon for his failing entrada," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in belatedly October. "The millions of hats will brand excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional just well-oiled political motorcar."
Trump saw the hats every bit a fundraising and advertising vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Fashion Week, no less.
"In the Style section, information technology was the decoration — what do you telephone call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the twelvemonth. Y'all know the hat. Y'all'd come across people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
Equally is often the case, Trump's description is more than a little hyperbolic. What the paper really wrote was that the "old-schoolhouse" caps had become "the ironic must-have fashion accessory of the summertime," favored by 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 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 entrada 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 x to one. It was knocked off by others. But it was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys ane, that's an advertising."
Nevertheless many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Great Again" caught on. It was the most effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"Information technology actually inspired me," Trump said, "considering to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant armed services force. Information technology meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."
[When was America great? It depends on who you are.]
That kind of mission argument was something that Clinton's entrada — for all its poll testing and loftier-priced advice from Madison Artery — struggled to articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a full general-election campaign slogan earlier settling on "Stronger Together," according to an email from the account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were up confronting was nothing short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'south principal political strategist. Trump "understood the market place that he was trying to accomplish. Yous can't deny him that. He was very focused from the starting time on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined up u.s. 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 Post, Trump shared a flake 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."
"Become me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Ii minutes later, one arrived.
"Volition you lot trademark and annals, if you would, if you like information technology — I think I like it, correct? Exercise this: 'Go along America Great,' with an exclamation bespeak. With and without an exclamation. 'Go along America Great,' " Trump said.
"Got it," the lawyer replied.
That bit of concern out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never thought I'd exist giving [you] my expression for four years [from at present]," he said. "Simply I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to exist so amazing. Information technology'due south the merely reason I give it to you lot. 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 can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it even mean?
"Beingness a groovy president has to practice with a lot of things, just one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to show the people as we build upwards our armed forces, we're going to display our military.
"That military machine may come up marching down Pennsylvania Artery. That military machine may exist flight 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 best-selling that slogans and showmanship will non be the ultimate tests of whether the land is "great again."
The president-elect has an aggressive to-practise list for the adjacent four years: building stronger borders, keeping the land safe confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Human activity, replacing it with something meliorate, promoting excellence in technology and science, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be up to the people for whom "Make America Great Again" was a covenant, non a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived upwardly to his promise.
"I think they have to feel information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the land is very important, but yous still have to produce the results."
"Honestly, yous haven't seen annihilation all the same. Wait till you see what happens, starting next Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Nifty things."
Read more:
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Alice Crites contributed to this 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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