My Plan to Make America Great Again
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on January. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
"Make America Bang-up Over again."
The four 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 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 be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit down in the Oval Office once again.
Just on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at hand.
And in typical fashion, the beginning affair he idea nearly was how to make it.
1 later on another, phrases popped into his head. "We Volition Make America Great." That i did not have the correct ring. Then, "Make America Peachy." But that sounded like a slight to the state.
So, it 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 take got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Run across if you tin can accept this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Five days afterwards, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Brand America Great 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 confronting the conventional wisdom of the fourth dimension — in fact, it was "much the opposite," Trump said.
To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, go kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Dandy Again" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to variety or civility or progress.
Information technology 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 country had, and whether information technology's at the edge, whether information technology'due south security, whether it's law and guild or lack of police and order. Then, of course, you get to merchandise, and I said to myself, 'What would be skillful?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am correct now, and I said, 'Make America Groovy Once more.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'm not your candidate. I think there is more correct than incorrect," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't call up we take to brand America swell. I think nosotros have to make America greater."
Her husband, former president Beak Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist dog whistle.
"I'm actually sometime enough to remember the proficient onetime days, and they weren't all that good in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll requite you America great again' is if yous'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.W. Bush had used "Let's Brand America Neat Again" in their 1980 entrada — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until near a year agone.
"But he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His decision to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman's heed-set. "I remember I'1000 somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organisation lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward 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 actually using information technology for the purposes spelled out in his application.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "brand America great once more" into their ain speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off terminate-and-desist letters.
Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Make America Great Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
More than just a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a cluttered entrada. The one abiding, it frequently seemed, was "Brand America Slap-up Once more."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on like information technology did. It's been astonishing," Trump said. "The chapeau, I approximate, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you say?"
There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his entrada was spending more on "Brand America Great Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.
"An appropriate icon for his declining entrada," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in belatedly October. "The millions of hats will make splendid keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'due south unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political machine."
Trump saw the hats equally a fundraising and advertizing vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Way department — during Fashion Week, no less.
"In the Style department, it was the ornamentation — what practice you call that? — an accompaniment. They said the accessory of the yr. Yous know the hat. You'd run into people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
As is often the example, Trump's clarification is more than a little hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "old-school" caps had go "the ironic must-have way accessory of the summertime," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny ability to capture the current absurdist political moment."
None of which fazed the celebrity 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 upwardly. 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.
"Information technology was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by 10 to ane. Information technology was knocked off by others. But it was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys 1, that'southward an advertisement."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Brand America Great Again" caught on. It was the nigh effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it meant jobs. Information technology meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. Information technology meant then much."
[When was America not bad? Information technology depends on who you are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton'southward entrada — for all its poll testing and high-priced advice from Madison Avenue — struggled to clear.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election 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 nothing short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's principal political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to achieve. 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 united states of america 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 unmarried-mindedly and ingeniously."
Thinking reelection
Halfway through his interview with The Washington Postal service, Trump shared a chip of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Smashing,' assertion point."
"Go me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
2 minutes afterward, one arrived.
"Will yous trademark and register, if you lot would, if you like it — I think I like it, right? Do this: 'Keep America Great,' with an exclamation point. With and without an assertion. 'Go on America Keen,' " Trump said.
"Got it," 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. "But I am so confident that we are going to exist, it is going to exist so astonishing. It's the only reason I requite information technology to you. If I was, similar, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't certain most what is going to happen — the land is going to be great."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness exist measured and sensed? What does information technology fifty-fifty hateful?
"Beingness a smashing president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the land," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to testify the people as we build upwardly our military, we're going to display our military machine.
"That military may come up marching down Pennsylvania Artery. That military may exist flying over New York Urban center and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, nosotros'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 ambitious to-exercise list for the adjacent four years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe against terrorism, producing more than jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with something better, promoting excellence in engineering and scientific discipline, investing in mod infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be up to the people for whom "Make America Great Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived upwards to his promise.
"I call up they accept to feel information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the state is very important, simply you still have to produce the results."
"Honestly, you haven't seen anything yet. Wait till you see what happens, starting next Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Swell 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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