Who Started Lets 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 Swell Again."

The four words that would assistance propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years earlier, when hardly anyone simply Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the Usa.

It happened on November. vii, 2012, the twenty-four hour period later on 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 Role again.

But on the 26th flooring of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his ain moment was at mitt.

And in typical style, the first matter he idea about was how to brand it.

1 after another, phrases popped into his head. "We Volition Brand America Great." That ane did not take the correct band. Then, "Make America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the state.

And then, it hitting him: "Make America Bang-up Again."

"I said, 'That is and then good.' I wrote it down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I take a lot of lawyers in-business firm. Nosotros accept many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Run into if you tin 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 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 against the conventional wisdom of the time — in fact, information technology was "much the opposite," Trump said.

To salvage itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. "Brand America Nifty Again" was divisive and astern-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.

It sounded similar a expiry wish.

But Trump had seen something different 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 affliction our country had, and whether information technology's at the border, whether information technology's security, whether information technology's law and order or lack of police and order. Then, of grade, you lot get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be expert?' I was sitting at my desk-bound, where I am right now, and I said, 'Brand America Nifty Once again.' "

Democrats slammed it.

"If y'all're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'chiliad non your candidate. I think there is more correct than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we have to make America great. I think we have to brand America greater."

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

"I'k actually old enough to call up the good quondam days, and they weren't all that skillful in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll requite you America nifty again' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what information technology means, don't y'all?"

The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.Westward. Bush had used "Let's Make America Great Over again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a yr agone.

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

His decision to merits legal buying reflected a businessman's mind-set. "I think I'one thousand 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 constructive on July 14, 2015, a month afterwards 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 idea. 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 cease-and-desist letters.

Trump's blood-red trucker cap featuring the Make America Great Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Postal service)

More than only a lid

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a cluttered campaign. The i abiding, it ofttimes seemed, was "Make America Dandy 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 say?"

In that location were enough of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Make America Bully 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 Oct. "The millions of hats volition brand fantabulous keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political car."

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

"In the Style section, it was the decoration — what do you lot call that? — an accompaniment. They said the accompaniment of the year. Yous know the hat. Y'all'd run across people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.

As is often the instance, Trump's description is more than a little hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "old-school" caps had become "the ironic must-have style accompaniment of the summer," 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 up. 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.

"It was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by ten to one. It was knocked off past others. Only it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys ane, that'due south an advertisement."

However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Great Again" defenseless on. It was the well-nigh constructive 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 military strength. It meant taking intendance of our veterans. Information technology meant so much."

[When was America bang-up? Information technology depends on who y'all are.]

That kind of mission argument was something that Clinton's entrada — for all its poll testing and loftier-priced advice from Madison Avenue — 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 campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.

What they were up against was naught brusk of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's chief political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to attain. You tin can't deny him that. He was very focused from the offset on who he was talking to."

While Clinton carried the pop vote, Trump lined up 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 it single-mindedly and ingeniously."

Thinking reelection

Halfway through his interview with The Washington Postal service, Trump shared a scrap of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

"Are yous ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Great,' assertion point."

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

Two minutes later, one arrived.

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

"Got it," the lawyer replied.

That bit of business organization out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.

"I never thought I'd be giving [you] 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 amazing. It'due south the only reason I requite it to y'all. If I was, like, cryptic about it, if I wasn't sure well-nigh what is going to happen — the land is going to be keen."

All of which raises the questions: How tin can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it fifty-fifty hateful?

"Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a swell cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to show the people as we build up our military, nosotros're going to brandish our military.

"That armed forces may come marching downwards Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flight over New York Metropolis and Washington, D.C., for parades. I hateful, nosotros're going to exist showing our armed services," he added.

Simply Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship volition not exist the ultimate tests of whether the country is "keen again."

The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the next four years: edifice stronger borders, keeping the state safe confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Deed, replacing it with something ameliorate, promoting excellence in engineering and scientific discipline, investing in modern infrastructure.

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

"I think they accept to feel it," Trump best-selling. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very of import, but you yet have to produce the results."

"Honestly, yous haven't seen anything yet. Wait till you come across what happens, starting adjacent Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great things."

Read more:

Trump's Cabinet nominees continue contradicting him

Surprisingly, Trump inauguration shapes upward to be a relatively low-cardinal affair

'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

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