Make America Great Again Make America Great Again Refers to When

President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Mail)

"Make America Great Once more."

The iv words that would assistance propel Donald Trump to the White Business firm were an inspiration born years before, when hardly anyone simply Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office 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 against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, 1 that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Role again.

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

And in typical fashion, the first matter he thought nigh was how to brand it.

One later another, phrases popped into his caput. "We Volition Make America Swell." That one did non take the right ring. Then, "Make America Cracking." But that sounded like a slight to the state.

And and then, it hitting him: "Brand America Great Again."

"I said, 'That is and 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 take got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Encounter if yous tin have this registered and trademarked.' "

(Alice Li/The Washington Mail)

Five days afterward, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Make America Nifty Once more" for "political action committee services, namely, promoting public awareness 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 establishment was convinced, the GOP would accept to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. "Brand America Dandy Again" was divisive and astern-looking. It fabricated no nod to diversity or civility or progress.

It sounded like a decease wish.

Just Trump had seen something dissimilar 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 affliction our country had, and whether it's at the border, whether it'due south security, whether it's law and social club or lack of constabulary and order. Then, of course, y'all go to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be skilful?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Cracking Again.' "

Democrats slammed information technology.

"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 incorrect," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think nosotros have to make America great. I call up we have to make America greater."

Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, went so far as to declare information technology a racist canis familiaris whistle.

"I'thou really old enough to recollect the skilful erstwhile days, and they weren't all that skilful in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll give you America swell again' is if you lot're a white Southerner, you lot know exactly what it ways, don't you?"

The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Let's Make America Slap-up Once more" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did non know until well-nigh a yr ago.

"But he didn't trademark information technology," Trump said of Reagan.

His decision to claim legal ownership reflected a man of affairs's mind-gear up. "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 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 aggressive 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's lawyers fired off stop-and-desist letters.

Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Make America Great Again slogan was ubiquitious during the entrada. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

More than only a hat

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one abiding, information technology oftentimes seemed, was "Make America Smashing Again."

"I didn't know it was going to catch on like it did. It's been astonishing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you lot say?"

In that location were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Make America Great 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 late October. "The millions of hats will make excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political machine."

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

"In the Style section, it was the ornament — what practise you telephone call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory 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.

Every bit is often the instance, Trump'south description is more than a trivial hyperbolic. What the newspaper really wrote was that the "quondam-schoolhouse" caps had become "the ironic must-have way accessory of the summer," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny ability to capture the current absurdist political moment."

None of which fazed the glory billionaire who had debuted the hats past 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 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 10 to i. It was knocked off by others. But it was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys i, that's an advertisement."

However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Smashing Again" caught on. It was the almost constructive kind of political message, seize with teeth-sized and visceral.

"Information technology actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it meant jobs. Information technology meant manufacture, and meant war machine forcefulness. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."

[When was America not bad? It depends on who you are.]

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

Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-ballot entrada 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 zippo brusque of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's main political strategist. Trump "understood the marketplace 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 up the states he needed to win what mattered: the balloter 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 bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

"Are you ready?" he said. " 'Continue America Great,' exclamation point."

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

Two minutes afterward, one arrived.

"Will you trademark and register, if you would, if yous like it — I think I like it, right? Do this: 'Keep America Cracking,' with an exclamation signal. With and without an assertion. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.

"Got it," the lawyer replied.

That flake of business organisation out of the manner, Trump returned to the interview.

"I never thought I'd be giving [you] my expression for four years [from now]," he said. "Only I am so confident that we are going to be, information technology is going to exist so astonishing. It'south the only reason I give information technology to you. If I was, similar, ambiguous well-nigh it, if I wasn't sure nigh 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?

"Being a great president has to practice with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the land," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as nosotros build upwardly our military, we're going to display our military.

"That military may come up marching downwards Pennsylvania Artery. That military may be flight over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military," he added.

Only Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship will not exist the ultimate tests of whether the country is "great over again."

The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the next four years: edifice stronger borders, keeping the state condom against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Human action, replacing information technology with something improve, promoting excellence in engineering science and science, investing in mod infrastructure.

Ultimately, it will exist up to the people for whom "Brand America Great Once more" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived upwards to his promise.

"I recollect they have to feel information technology," Trump best-selling. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the state is very important, merely y'all still have to produce the results."

"Honestly, you haven't seen anything all the same. Expect till you 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 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