When America Is Great Again Dtrump Will Be Reviled by American Patriots
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Mail)
"Make America Great Again."
The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years earlier, when hardly anyone just Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States.
It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the twenty-four hours after 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 Office again.
Only on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his proper noun, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at hand.
And in typical fashion, the outset thing he thought about was how to brand it.
One after some other, phrases popped into his head. "We Volition Brand America Dandy." That one did not have the right ring. Then, "Make America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the land.
And so, it striking him: "Make 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-firm. We take many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Run across if yous 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 Part, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Make America Great Again" for "political activeness commission 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 confronting the conventional wisdom of the time — 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, become kinder and more inclusive. "Brand America Great Once more" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded like 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 illness our country had, and whether it's at the border, whether it's security, whether it'south law and gild or lack of law and order. Then, of course, you get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am correct now, and I said, 'Make America Great Once more.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm not your candidate. I recall at that place is more right than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we have to make America great. I call up nosotros take to make America greater."
Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, went and so far as to declare information technology a racist dog whistle.
"I'm actually one-time enough to remember the good former 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 peachy again' is if y'all'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'southward Make America Bang-up Once more" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until nearly a year ago.
"Simply he didn't trademark information technology," Trump said of Reagan.
His determination to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman'southward mind-set. "I call back I'chiliad somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.
Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upwardly of 800 trademarks in more than than 80 countries.
The trademark became constructive on July 14, 2015, a month later on Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was actually using information technology for the purposes spelled out in his awarding.
Having won the trademark, Trump was ambitious in protecting his idea. When his GOP chief rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "brand America great again" into their ain speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.
Trump'southward red trucker cap featuring the Make America Great Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Postal service)
More than than simply a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one constant, it often seemed, was "Make America Great Again."
"I didn't know information technology was going to take hold of on like it did. It's been amazing," 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 Committee 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 campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats will make fantabulous keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional merely 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 Fashion section — during Manner Calendar week, no less.
"In the Style department, information technology was the ornament — what do you telephone call that? — an accompaniment. They said the accessory of the year. Y'all know the chapeau. Yous'd come across people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.
Every bit is often the case, Trump's description is more than a niggling hyperbolic. What the paper really wrote was that the "old-school" caps had get "the ironic must-have manner accessory 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 by wearing 1 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. Information technology was knocked off past 10 to one. It was knocked off by others. Just it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that's an advertisement."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Slap-up Again" caught on. It was the nearly effective kind of political bulletin, bite-sized and visceral.
"Information technology 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. It meant and so much."
[When was America neat? Information technology depends on who you are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton'southward 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 campaign slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," co-ordinate to an email from the account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were up confronting was nothing brusk of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's main political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to reach. You tin't deny him that. He was very focused from the start on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the pop vote, Trump lined up the states he needed to win what mattered: the balloter college.
"In terms of galvanizing the market place 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 flake of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you prepare?" he said. " 'Continue America Neat,' exclamation indicate."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Two minutes later on, one arrived.
"Will you trademark and register, if you lot would, if yous like it — I call up I like it, right? Do this: 'Keep America Neat,' with an exclamation bespeak. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Smashing,' " Trump said.
"Got it," the lawyer replied.
That bit of business out of the way, Trump returned to the interview.
"I never idea 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. Information technology's the only reason I requite it to you. If I was, like, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure most what is going to happen — the state is going to exist great."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it even mean?
"Being a cracking president has to do with a lot of things, simply 1 of them is beingness a cracking cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to prove the people as we build up our military machine, we're going to brandish our military machine.
"That military machine may come up marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military," he added.
Just Trump best-selling that slogans and showmanship volition non be the ultimate tests of whether the land is "great again."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-exercise list for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the land condom confronting terrorism, producing more than jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with something ameliorate, promoting excellence in technology and scientific discipline, investing in modern infrastructure.
Ultimately, it will be upwardly to the people for whom "Brand America Great Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived upwards to his promise.
"I think they have to experience information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Beingness a cheerleader or a salesman for the state is very important, merely you lot still have to produce the results."
"Honestly, you haven't seen anything yet. Wait till you see what happens, starting adjacent Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Corking things."
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Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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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