How Did Donald Trump Come Up With the Campan Slogan Make America Great Again

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

"Make America Great Over again."

The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White Business firm were an inspiration born years earlier, when hardly anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of part equally the 45th president of the U.s.a..

It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the 24-hour interval afterwards Hand Romney lost what had been presumed to exist 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 again.

Simply 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 hand.

And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought about was how to brand information technology.

One afterward another, phrases popped into his head. "Nosotros Will Make America Great." That one did not take the right band. And then, "Make America Bang-up." But that sounded like a slight to the state.

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

"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote information technology downwardly," 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 tin have this registered and trademarked.' "

(Alice Li/The Washington Postal service)

5 days subsequently, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Brand America Cracking Again" for "political action group 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, information technology was "much the opposite," Trump said.

To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would take to sand off its edges, get kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Smashing Again" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.

It sounded like a death wish.

Merely Trump had seen something dissimilar in the country, 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 it's at the border, whether it'southward security, whether it's police force and order or lack of law and club. And so, of course, you lot go to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am correct at present, and I said, 'Brand America Dandy Once more.' "

Democrats slammed it.

"If you're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'm not your candidate. I retrieve there is more than correct than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we take to make America keen. I call back we have to make America greater."

Her husband, former president Neb Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist domestic dog whistle.

"I'1000 actually sometime plenty to recollect the good erstwhile days, and they weren't all that adept in many means," he said at a rally in Orlando. "That message where 'I'll give you America great again' is if you're a white Southerner, yous know exactly what it means, don't yous?"

The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.Westward. Bush-league had used "Permit's Brand America Great 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 conclusion to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman's mind-prepare. "I think I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.

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

The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a month after Trump formally appear his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was really using it for the purposes spelled out in his application.

Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP principal rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America cracking again" into their own speeches, Trump'due south lawyers fired off terminate-and-desist letters.

Trump's cherry trucker cap featuring the Make America Great Once again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Postal service)

More than merely a chapeau

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The 1 constant, it ofttimes seemed, was "Make America Great Again."

"I didn't know it was going to grab on like it did. It's been amazing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't yous say?"

There were plenty of snickers when his Federal Ballot Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Brand America Great Once more" 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 October. "The millions of hats will make excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'southward unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political machine."

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

"In the Style department, it was the ornamentation — what do y'all call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the year. You know the hat. You'd meet people going to the fanciest assurance at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.

Equally is often the case, Trump'due south description is more than than a niggling hyperbolic. What the paper actually wrote was that the "old-school" caps had become "the ironic must-take mode accessory of the summer," favored past hipsters for their "uncanny ability to capture the current absurdist political moment."

None of which fazed the glory billionaire who had debuted the hats by 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 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.

"It was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by 10 to ane. It was knocked off by others. But information technology was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that's an advertising."

Withal many hats he sold, what cannot exist disputed is that "Make America Smashing Again" caught on. Information technology was the most effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.

"It really inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it meant jobs. It meant manufacture, and meant military machine force. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."

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

That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton'due south campaign — for all its poll testing and high-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 entrada chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.

What they were up against was nothing short of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's principal 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 outset on who he was talking to."

While Clinton carried the popular vote, Trump lined upward united states of america he needed to win what mattered: the balloter 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 Post, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

"Are you fix?" he said. " 'Continue America Bang-up,' exclamation indicate."

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

Two minutes later, one arrived.

"Will you trademark and annals, if y'all would, if you like it — I think I similar information technology, right? Do this: 'Continue America Great,' with an exclamation betoken. With and without an exclamation. 'Go on America Swell,' " Trump said.

"Got information technology," the lawyer replied.

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

"I never thought I'd be giving [you] my expression for 4 years [from now]," he said. "But I am so confident that nosotros are going to be, information technology is going to be so amazing. It'southward the only reason I requite it to you. If I was, like, ambiguous nearly it, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen — the country is going to be cracking."

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

"Being a great president has to practice with a lot of things, but i of them is existence a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people every bit nosotros build up our armed forces, we're going to display our military.

"That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Artery. That military may be flight over New York Metropolis and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our armed forces," he added.

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

The president-elect has an aggressive to-practise listing for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe against terrorism, producing more than jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Human action, replacing it with something improve, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modern infrastructure.

Ultimately, it will be upwardly to the people for whom "Make America Bang-up Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived upward to his promise.

"I think they have to experience it," Trump acknowledged. "Beingness a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, but yous still have to produce the results."

"Honestly, you haven't seen annihilation notwithstanding. Await till y'all see what happens, starting side by side Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Nifty things."

Read more:

Trump's Cabinet nominees continue contradicting him

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

'Finally. Someone who thinks like me.'

Alice Crites contributed to this written 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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