White House Administration Uses Make America Great Again
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on January. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Mail)
"Make America Great Again."
The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White Firm were an inspiration born years earlier, when hardly anyone merely Trump himself could imagine him taking the adjuration of function as the 45th president of the Usa.
It happened on Nov. vii, 2012, the day later on Paw 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 in the Oval Office over again.
But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan belfry that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at hand.
And in typical mode, the first matter he idea about was how to brand information technology.
One after another, phrases popped into his head. "Nosotros Will Make America Great." That one did not have the correct ring. Then, "Make America Groovy." But that sounded like a slight to the country.
And then, it hitting him: "Brand America Groovy 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-firm. 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 Mail)
V days later on, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to apply "Make 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, it was "much the contrary," Trump said.
To salve itself, the Republican institution was convinced, the GOP would accept to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Nifty Over 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 state, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.
"I felt that jobs were hurting," he said. "I looked at the many types of disease our land had, and whether information technology's at the border, whether it's security, whether information technology's law and order or lack of law and social club. And so, of course, you go to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be good?' I was sitting at my desk-bound, where I am right at present, and I said, 'Make America Not bad 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 wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we take to make America great. I recollect we have to make America greater."
Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, went and so far every bit to declare information technology a racist dog whistle.
"I'm actually former plenty to remember the good old days, and they weren't all that good in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll give you America groovy once again' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what information technology means, don't you lot?"
The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Let's Make America Neat Over again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a year ago.
"But he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His decision to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman's mind-set. "I recollect I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than than lxxx countries.
The trademark became effective on July xiv, 2015, a month after Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was really 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 again" into their own speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.
Trump's cherry trucker cap featuring the Make America Great Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Mail service)
More than just a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a cluttered campaign. The one constant, it oft seemed, was "Brand America Bang-up Again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on like information technology did. It'due south been amazing," Trump said. "The lid, I judge, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't y'all say?"
There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Committee filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Make America Smashing Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.
"An appropriate icon for his declining campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats will make splendid keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political automobile."
Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and ad vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Fashion Calendar week, no less.
"In the Style section, it was the ornament — what do you 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.
As is often the case, Trump'south description is more than than a niggling hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "former-school" caps had become "the ironic must-have manner accessory of the summertime," favored past hipsters for their "uncanny power to capture the current absurdist political moment."
None of which fazed the celebrity billionaire who had debuted the hats past wearing ane 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.
"Information technology 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 one, that's an advertisement."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Great Again" caught on. It was the virtually effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.
"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, information technology meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant armed forces forcefulness. It meant taking care of our veterans. Information technology meant so much."
[When was America nifty? It depends on who you are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's campaign — for all its poll testing and high-priced communication from Madison Avenue — struggled to clear.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election campaign slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," co-ordinate to an email from the business relationship of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were upwardly against was zilch short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'southward chief political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to reach. You lot can't deny him that. He was very focused from the starting time on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined up u.s.a. he needed to win what mattered: the electoral college.
"In terms of galvanizing the market 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 set up?" he said. " 'Keep America Great,' exclamation betoken."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Ii minutes afterward, i arrived.
"Will yous trademark and annals, if y'all would, if you like it — I think I like it, right? Exercise this: 'Proceed America Great,' with an assertion point. With and without an assertion. '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 [y'all] my expression for four years [from now]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to exist then amazing. Information technology's the only reason I give it to you. If I was, like, cryptic almost it, if I wasn't certain about what is going to happen — the country is going to be slap-up."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it fifty-fifty hateful?
"Beingness a nifty president has to exercise with a lot of things, but one of them is existence a slap-up cheerleader for the state," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to testify the people as nosotros build up our military, we're going to display our military.
"That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That war machine may exist flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our armed forces," he added.
But Trump best-selling that slogans and showmanship will non be the ultimate tests of whether the country is "great again."
The president-elect has an aggressive to-practice list for the next 4 years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe against terrorism, producing more than jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Act, replacing it with something better, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modernistic infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be upwards to the people for whom "Make America Great Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived upward to his promise.
"I think they accept to experience information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, but y'all still have to produce the results."
"Honestly, yous haven't seen anything yet. Expect till you see what happens, starting next Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great 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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