Trump.making America Great Again One Day at a Time
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Brand America Cracking Again."
The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White Business firm were an inspiration born years before, when hardly anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office equally the 45th president of the United States.
It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the day after Hand Romney lost what had been presumed to exist a winnable race confronting President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Function again.
Merely on the 26th floor of a aureate Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the determination that his own moment was at hand.
And in typical fashion, the outset thing he thought about was how to make it.
One subsequently some other, phrases popped into his head. "We Volition Make America Corking." That one did not have the correct ring. Then, "Make America Smashing." Only that sounded similar a slight to the country.
So, information technology hit him: "Make America Great Again."
"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote information technology downwards," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-business firm. We have many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Run into if you can have this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Five days later, Trump signed an awarding with the U.Due south. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Make America Swell Over 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 confronting the conventional wisdom of the time — in fact, it was "much the opposite," Trump said.
To salvage itself, the Republican institution was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Smashing Again" was divisive and astern-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded like a death wish.
But Trump had seen something different 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 illness our land had, and whether it's at the edge, whether it'due south security, whether it'due south law and order or lack of law and order. Then, of course, y'all 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 Once more.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm not your candidate. I think there is more right than wrong," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we have to make America dandy. I think we take to make America greater."
Her husband, sometime president Nib Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist canis familiaris whistle.
"I'chiliad actually old enough to retrieve the good sometime days, and they weren't all that practiced in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll give you America great once more' is if you're a white Southerner, y'all know exactly what it means, don't y'all?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.West. Bush-league had used "Let's Brand America Great Once more" in their 1980 entrada — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until nigh a year agone.
"But he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His conclusion to merits legal ownership reflected a businessman'south mind-set. "I think I'm 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 effective on July fourteen, 2015, a month after Trump formally appear 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 master rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America great over again" into their own speeches, Trump'southward lawyers fired off finish-and-desist letters.
Trump'south carmine trucker cap featuring the Make America Swell Once more slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Postal service)
More than just a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one constant, it often seemed, was "Brand America Dandy Over again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on like it did. It'south been amazing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, 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 "Make America Not bad Once more" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television set ads.
"An appropriate icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in tardily October. "The millions of hats will make fantabulous keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'southward unimaginative and conventional but 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 Way Week, no less.
"In the Style section, information technology was the ornament — what do you lot call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the year. Yous know the hat. You lot'd see people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing carmine hats," he exulted.
As is ofttimes the example, Trump's clarification is more than than a little hyperbolic. What the paper really wrote was that the "old-school" caps had go "the ironic must-take fashion accessory of the summer," 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 1 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 basic models sold through his campaign website were priced at $25.
"How many did we sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.
"Information technology was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by x to i. It was knocked off by others. Just information technology was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that's an advertisement."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Neat Once more" caught on. Information technology was the most effective kind of political bulletin, bite-sized and visceral.
"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military machine strength. 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 entrada — for all its poll testing and high-priced communication from Madison Artery — struggled to articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-ballot campaign slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," according to an email from the business relationship of entrada chairman John Podesta that was published past WikiLeaks.
What they were upwards confronting was nothing short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'southward chief political strategist. Trump "understood the market place that he was trying to attain. You tin can't deny him that. He was very focused from the start on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the pop vote, Trump lined up u.s. he needed to win what mattered: the electoral college.
"In terms of galvanizing the marketplace that he was talking to," Axelrod said, "he did information technology single-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Postal service, Trump shared a fleck of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Great,' assertion indicate."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Ii minutes later, one arrived.
"Will you trademark and register, if you would, if you like it — I call back I like information technology, right? Practice this: 'Keep America Nifty,' with an exclamation point. With and without an exclamation. 'Proceed America Bang-up,' " Trump said.
"Got information technology," the lawyer replied.
That bit of business 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. "Just I am so confident that we are going to be, information technology is going to exist so astonishing. It's the only reason I give it to y'all. If I was, like, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't certain about what is going to happen — the country is going to exist bully."
All of which raises the questions: How tin can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it even mean?
"Beingness a smashing president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is existence a peachy cheerleader for the land," Trump said. "And we're going to bear witness the people as we build up our military, nosotros're going to display our military.
"That war machine may come marching downwardly Pennsylvania Artery. That military machine may be flight over New York Metropolis and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be 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-do list for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the land rubber against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with something ameliorate, promoting excellence in technology and science, investing in modernistic infrastructure.
Ultimately, information technology will be up to the people for whom "Brand America Great Over again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to determine whether the 45th president has lived upwards to his promise.
"I think they accept to feel it," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, only yous still take to produce the results."
"Honestly, you oasis't seen anything nevertheless. Wait till you see what happens, starting side by side Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Keen things."
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Alice Crites contributed to this written 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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