Lets See Trump Make America Great Again Now

President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on Jan. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

"Brand America Slap-up Again."

The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White Firm were an inspiration built-in years before, when hardly anyone just Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office every bit the 45th president of the Usa.

It happened on November. 7, 2012, the day afterward Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, ane that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Office once more.

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 paw.

And in typical fashion, the first thing he idea about was how to make it.

I subsequently some other, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Brand America Great." That one did not accept the correct band. Then, "Make America Bang-up." Merely that sounded like a slight to the country.

And and so, it hit him: "Make America Great Again."

"I said, 'That is so adept.' I wrote it down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-business firm. We have many lawyers. I take got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Encounter if you lot can have this registered and trademarked.' "

(Alice Li/The Washington Post)

Five days later, Trump signed an awarding with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Brand America Bang-up Once more" for "political action commission 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 reverse," Trump said.

To save itself, the Republican institution was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. "Brand America Bang-up Again" was divisive and astern-looking. Information technology fabricated no nod to diversity or civility or progress.

It sounded like a death wish.

Just Trump had seen something unlike 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 disease our country had, and whether it's at the edge, whether it's security, whether information technology'south law and lodge or lack of law and gild. And 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, 'Brand America Great Once again.' "

Democrats slammed it.

"If you're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'm not your candidate. I call up in that location is more correct than incorrect," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't retrieve we have to make America slap-up. I think we have to make America greater."

Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, went then far as to declare it a racist dog whistle.

"I'm really old plenty to remember the skillful old days, and they weren't all that expert in many ways," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll requite you America smashing over again' is if you're a white Southerner, yous know exactly what it means, don't you?"

The slogan itself was non entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Let's Make America Not bad Over again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a twelvemonth ago.

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

His decision to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman'due south mind-set. "I think I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.

Trump System lawyer Alan Garten said Trump holds upward of 800 trademarks in more than than 80 countries.

The trademark became constructive on July fourteen, 2015, a month after 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 ambitious in protecting his idea. When his GOP master rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "brand America groovy again" into their own speeches, Trump'southward lawyers fired off terminate-and-desist letters.

Trump's reddish trucker cap featuring the Make America Dandy Once again slogan was ubiquitious during the entrada. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

More than than but a lid

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a cluttered entrada. The one constant, it oft seemed, was "Make America Great Again."

"I didn't know it was going to catch on similar it did. It's been amazing," Trump said. "The chapeau, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you say?"

There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Committee filings showed that his entrada was spending more than on "Make America Peachy Once more" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or tv set ads.

"An advisable icon for his declining campaign," the Washington Examiner'due south Philip Wegmann wrote in tardily October. "The millions of hats will make splendid keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'southward unimaginative and conventional only well-oiled political auto."

Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and advertizement vehicle. He was thrilled when his entrada headgear landed in the New York Times Style section — during Mode Week, no less.

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

As is oftentimes the case, Trump'southward description is more than a little hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "old-school" caps had become "the ironic must-take manner accessory of the summer," favored past hipsters for their "uncanny power to capture the electric 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 edge — or the legions of supporters who raced to snap them up. Trump had designed them himself, he said. The bones models sold through his campaign website were priced at $25.

"How many did nosotros sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.

"Information technology was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by 10 to one. It was knocked off past others. Simply it was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys one, that's an advertizement."

However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Great Once again" caught on. It was the most constructive kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.

"Information technology actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military forcefulness. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."

[When was America great? Information technology depends on who you are.]

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

What they were upwards against was nothing brusque of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's chief political strategist. Trump "understood the marketplace that he was trying to reach. You lot 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 up the states he needed to win what mattered: the electoral higher.

"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 Mail, Trump shared a scrap of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

"Are you ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Nifty,' exclamation bespeak."

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

Two minutes later, one arrived.

"Will you trademark and register, if you would, if you like it — I think I like it, right? Exercise this: 'Keep America Dandy,' with an assertion bespeak. With and without an assertion. 'Keep America Great,' " Trump said.

"Got it," the lawyer replied.

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

"I never thought I'd be giving [you] my expression for four years [from at present]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, information technology is going to be so amazing. Information technology'southward the only reason I requite it to you. If I was, similar, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure nigh what is going to happen — the country is going to be swell."

All of which raises the questions: How can greatness exist measured and sensed? What does it even mean?

"Being a great president has to exercise with a lot of things, merely one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as nosotros build upwards our military, we're going to display our military.

"That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Artery. That military machine may exist flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I hateful, nosotros're going to be showing our military," he added.

But Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship volition not be the ultimate tests of whether the country is "great again."

The president-elect has an aggressive to-practise list for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Act, replacing information technology with something amend, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modern infrastructure.

Ultimately, information technology volition be up to the people for whom "Make America Great Again" was a covenant, non a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived up to his hope.

"I think they have to experience information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the state is very important, but you still have to produce the results."

"Honestly, y'all oasis't seen anything yet. Wait till you run into what happens, starting next Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Dandy things."

Read more:

Trump's Cabinet nominees keep contradicting him

Surprisingly, Trump inauguration shapes upward to be a relatively easygoing 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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