How Is Trump Going to 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 Great Again."
The 4 words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years before, when hardly anyone only Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the The states.
It happened on November. 7, 2012, the day subsequently Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crunch, 1 that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Office once again.
But on the 26th floor 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 fashion, the kickoff thing he idea about was how to brand it.
One later some other, phrases popped into his caput. "We Will Make America Great." That one did not have the right ring. And so, "Make America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the country.
And and so, it hitting 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 accept 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 Post)
Five days later, Trump signed an application with the U.South. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for sectional rights to use "Make America Great 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 fourth dimension — in fact, it was "much the reverse," Trump said.
To salve itself, the Republican institution was convinced, the GOP would take to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Great Again" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to variety 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 pain," he said. "I looked at the many types of affliction our country had, and whether information technology'south at the border, whether information technology's security, whether information technology's police force and gild or lack of constabulary and order. So, of course, you get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right at present, and I said, 'Make America Great Again.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If yous're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'1000 not your candidate. I think there is more correct than wrong," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we take to make America great. I think we have to make America greater."
Her hubby, quondam president Bill Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist dog whistle.
"I'one thousand actually sometime enough 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 requite you America groovy once more' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don't you?"
The slogan itself was non entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.Westward. Bush had used "Let'south Make America Slap-up Once more" in their 1980 entrada — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a year ago.
"Simply he didn't trademark information technology," Trump said of Reagan.
His decision to claim legal ownership reflected a man of affairs'south mind-set. "I think I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upwards of 800 trademarks in more than fourscore countries.
The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a month afterwards 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 ambitious in protecting his idea. When his GOP primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "brand America swell again" into their ain speeches, Trump'due south lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.
Trump's crimson trucker cap featuring the Make America Not bad Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
More than but a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one abiding, it ofttimes seemed, was "Make America Swell Again."
"I didn't know it was going to catch on like it did. It's 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 Peachy Once more" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television ads.
"An advisable icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats will brand excellent keepsakes for those who idea his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'due south unimaginative and conventional simply 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 Style section — during Fashion Week, no less.
"In the Style section, it was the ornament — what practise you call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the year. Y'all know the hat. You'd meet people going to the fanciest assurance at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
Every bit is often the case, Trump'south clarification is more than than a little hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "quondam-school" caps had become "the ironic must-accept fashion 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 by wearing i during a July 2015 trip to the Mexican edge — 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 nosotros sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.
"It was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by 10 to one. It was knocked off by others. But it 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 "Brand America Keen Again" defenseless on. It was the most constructive kind of political message, seize with teeth-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 care of our veterans. Information technology meant and so much."
[When was America dandy? 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 articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election campaign slogan earlier settling on "Stronger Together," according to an electronic mail from the business relationship of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were up confronting was zero short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's chief political strategist. Trump "understood the market place that he was trying to accomplish. Yous tin 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 upwards usa 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 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 bespeak."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Two minutes afterwards, one arrived.
"Will you trademark and register, if y'all would, if you like information technology — I call up I like information technology, right? Do this: 'Keep America Great,' with an exclamation betoken. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Great,' " 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 [y'all] my expression for iv years [from now]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be then amazing. It's the only reason I give information technology to yous. If I was, like, ambiguous about information technology, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen — the country is going to exist bully."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness exist measured and sensed? What does it fifty-fifty mean?
"Being a dandy president has to practice with a lot of things, but i of them is beingness a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to evidence the people as nosotros build upwardly our military, we're going to display our military.
"That war machine may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military 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 best-selling 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 4 years: edifice stronger borders, keeping the country safe confronting terrorism, producing more than jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with something improve, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modern 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 up to his hope.
"I think they have to experience it," Trump acknowledged. "Beingness a cheerleader or a salesman for the land is very important, merely yous still accept to produce the results."
"Honestly, yous oasis't seen annihilation nevertheless. Expect till you lot see what happens, starting next Monday," 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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