Trump Won 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 Great Again."

The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White Business firm were an inspiration born years before, when hardly anyone merely Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of function as the 45th president of the United States.

It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the day after Hand 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 Role again.

But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the determination that his ain moment was at hand.

And in typical fashion, the kickoff thing he idea almost was how to brand information technology.

I after another, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Bully." That one did non have the correct ring. Then, "Make America Swell." But that sounded like a slight to the country.

And then, information technology hit him: "Make America Great Again."

"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote it down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. We have many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'See 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 Office, in which he asked for sectional rights to employ "Make America Dandy Over again" for "political activeness 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 time — in fact, information technology was "much the opposite," Trump said.

To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, get kinder and more inclusive. "Brand America Not bad Once again" was divisive and backward-looking. Information technology fabricated no nod to diversity or civility or progress.

Information technology sounded similar a expiry wish.

But Trump had seen something different in the state, 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'southward at the border, whether information technology's security, whether it'due south constabulary and order or lack of law and order. So, of course, yous become to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be practiced?' I was sitting at my desk-bound, where I am right now, and I said, 'Brand America Bully Again.' "

Democrats slammed it.

"If you lot're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm non your candidate. I think at that place is more right than incorrect," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we take to make America great. I think nosotros take to make America greater."

Her married man, former president Pecker Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist dog whistle.

"I'm actually old enough to remember the good sometime 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 America great again' is if you're a white Southerner, you lot know exactly what information technology means, don't you?"

The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.Due west. Bush had used "Let's Make America Great Again" in their 1980 entrada — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a year ago.

"Merely he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.

His decision to merits legal buying reflected a businessman's listen-set. "I think I'yard somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.

Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than than 80 countries.

The trademark became effective on July fourteen, 2015, a calendar 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 application.

Having won the trademark, Trump was ambitious in protecting his idea. When his GOP primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "brand America peachy again" into their ain speeches, Trump'south lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.

Trump's carmine trucker cap featuring the Brand America Great Once again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

More just a hat

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a cluttered campaign. The one abiding, it oft seemed, was "Make America Great Again."

"I didn't know information technology was going to catch on like information technology did. It's been amazing," Trump said. "The chapeau, I approximate, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you say?"

At that place were enough of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Make America Dandy Once again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.

"An advisable icon for his failing entrada," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats volition make excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist blowing could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political machine."

Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and advertising vehicle. He was thrilled when his entrada headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Manner Calendar week, no less.

"In the Way section, it was the ornament — what exercise you phone call that? — an accessory. They said the accompaniment of the yr. You know the hat. Y'all'd see people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing scarlet hats," he exulted.

As is ofttimes the case, Trump's description is more than a piffling hyperbolic. What the paper actually wrote was that the "quondam-school" caps had go "the ironic must-have fashion accessory of the summertime," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny ability 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 upwards. 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. It was knocked off by 10 to one. Information technology was knocked off by others. But information technology was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys i, that'southward an advertizing."

Nevertheless many hats he sold, what cannot exist disputed is that "Make America Corking Again" caught on. It was the most effective kind of political message, seize with teeth-sized and visceral.

"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. Information technology meant so much."

[When was America great? It depends on who you are.]

That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton'south campaign — for all its poll testing and loftier-priced advice from Madison Avenue — struggled to clear.

Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election campaign slogan before 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 against was nil short 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 can't deny him that. He was very focused from the commencement on who he was talking to."

While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined up the states he needed to win what mattered: the balloter college.

"In terms of galvanizing the market place 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 gear up?" he said. " 'Keep America Smashing,' assertion point."

"Go me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.

2 minutes afterward, ane arrived.

"Will you trademark and register, if you lot would, if you like it — I think I like information technology, right? Practice this: 'Proceed America Corking,' with an exclamation 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 [you] my expression for iv years [from now]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be and so amazing. Information technology'southward the but reason I give information technology to you lot. If I was, like, ambiguous nigh it, if I wasn't sure nearly what is going to happen — the country is going to be dandy."

All of which raises the questions: How can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it even mean?

"Existence a great president has to do with a lot of things, merely one of them is being a groovy cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to show the people as we build upwardly our military, we're going to display our armed services.

"That war machine may come marching downwards Pennsylvania Artery. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we'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 "swell once again."

The president-elect has an aggressive to-do list for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the state safe against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Human activity, replacing information technology with something better, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modern infrastructure.

Ultimately, it will be upward to the people for whom "Make America Great Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to determine whether the 45th president has lived up to his promise.

"I remember they have to feel it," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, simply you notwithstanding have to produce the results."

"Honestly, y'all haven't seen anything nonetheless. Wait till you see what happens, starting adjacent Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Corking things."

Read more:

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'Finally. Someone who thinks like me.'

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