Did Trump Make America Great Again Yet
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Make America Great Again."
The four words that would assistance 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 function as the 45th president of the United States.
Information technology happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the day afterward Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race confronting 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 again.
But on the 26th floor of a aureate Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the decision that his own moment was at manus.
And in typical fashion, the commencement matter he thought about was how to brand it.
One after another, phrases popped into his head. "We Volition Brand America Nifty." That one did not have the right ring. So, "Make America Dandy." But that sounded like a slight to the country.
And then, information technology hit him: "Make America Bang-up 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-business firm. Nosotros have many lawyers. I accept got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'See if y'all can accept this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Five days later, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Make America Smashing Again" for "political action committee services, namely, promoting public awareness of political bug 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 accept 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.
It sounded like a decease wish.
But Trump had seen something dissimilar 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 illness our state had, and whether it'due south at the edge, whether it'southward security, whether it'southward police and order or lack of police force and order. And so, of course, yous 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 Great Again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm not your candidate. I think at that place is more right than wrong," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't recall nosotros have to brand America cracking. I recollect nosotros have to brand America greater."
Her married man, former president Bill Clinton, went and so far as to declare information technology a racist dog whistle.
"I'm actually old enough to remember the good erstwhile days, and they weren't all that good in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That bulletin where 'I'll give you lot America great once more' is if you lot're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don't you?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.Westward. Bush-league had used "Let's Make America Great Over again" in their 1980 entrada — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until nearly a twelvemonth ago.
"But he didn't trademark information technology," Trump said of Reagan.
His decision to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman's mind-set. "I think I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump System lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upwards of 800 trademarks in more than than 80 countries.
The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a month afterwards Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was really using it for the purposes spelled out in his awarding.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his thought. When his GOP main 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 Keen Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Postal service)
More than merely a chapeau
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a cluttered campaign. The one abiding, it ofttimes seemed, was "Make America Great Again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on similar it did. Information technology's been astonishing," Trump said. "The chapeau, I judge, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you say?"
There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Brand America Great Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or tv ads.
"An appropriate icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner'south Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats volition brand excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'south unimaginative and conventional only well-oiled political machine."
Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and advertising vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Manner section — during Fashion Calendar week, no less.
"In the Mode department, it was the decoration — what do you call that? — an accessory. They said the accompaniment of the year. You know the hat. You'd see people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
As is often the case, Trump'southward clarification is more a little hyperbolic. What the paper really wrote was that the "old-school" caps had go "the ironic must-have mode accompaniment of the summertime," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny power to capture the current absurdist political moment."
None of which fazed the celebrity billionaire who had debuted the hats by wearing one during a July 2022 trip to the Mexican border — or the legions of supporters who raced to snap them upwards. 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.
"It was copied, unfortunately. Information technology was knocked off by x to one. It was knocked off by others. Simply it was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys i, that's an advertizing."
All the same many hats he sold, what cannot exist disputed is that "Make America Smashing Again" caught on. It was the most effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "because 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? Information technology depends on who you are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton'south campaign — for all its poll testing and high-priced communication from Madison Avenue — struggled to articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election campaign slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," co-ordinate to an electronic mail from the account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published past WikiLeaks.
What they were up confronting was nothing short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'south chief political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to reach. You can'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 information technology single-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Post, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you prepare?" he said. " 'Keep America Great,' exclamation betoken."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Two minutes afterwards, i arrived.
"Will yous trademark and annals, if yous would, if y'all like it — I think I like information technology, right? Do this: 'Keep America Neat,' with an assertion point. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.
"Got it," the lawyer replied.
That chip of business concern out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never thought I'd be giving [yous] my expression for four years [from now]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be so astonishing. It's the simply reason I give it to yous. If I was, like, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure virtually 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 even mean?
"Being a corking president has to do with a lot of things, simply 1 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 military, we're going to brandish our military machine.
"That military may come up marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military 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 volition non be the ultimate tests of whether the country is "not bad once more."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the next 4 years: edifice stronger borders, keeping the land safe confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Act, replacing information technology with something better, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it volition exist up to the people for whom "Make America Peachy Once more" was a covenant, not a slogan, to determine 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 of import, but you lot yet accept to produce the results."
"Honestly, you haven't seen anything yet. Await till you come across what happens, starting next Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great 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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