Lets See Him Make America Great Again Now

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

"Make America Great Again."

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

It happened on November. 7, 2012, the day after Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to exist a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would always sit in the Oval Office again.

But on the 26th flooring of a aureate Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the decision that his own moment was at mitt.

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

I after another, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Brand America Great." That one did not have the right band. Then, "Make America Not bad." But that sounded like a slight to the country.

And and so, it hit him: "Make America Neat Once more."

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

(Alice Li/The Washington Post)

Five days later, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Brand America Great Over 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 confronting the conventional wisdom of the fourth dimension — in fact, it was "much the opposite," Trump said.

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

Information technology sounded like a death wish.

Merely Trump had seen something different 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 country had, and whether it's at the border, whether it'south security, whether information technology's law and social club or lack of law and gild. Then, of course, you get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be skilful?' I was sitting at my desk-bound, where I am correct now, and I said, 'Brand America Great Again.' "

Democrats slammed it.

"If y'all're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'm non your candidate. I think there is more than correct than incorrect," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't recall we accept to make America great. I recall nosotros have to make America greater."

Her married man, erstwhile president Beak Clinton, went then far as to declare it a racist dog whistle.

"I'1000 actually erstwhile 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 give you America cracking once more' is if you're a white Southerner, y'all know exactly what it ways, don't you?"

The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Let's Make America Great Once more" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a yr ago.

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

His decision to claim legal ownership reflected a man of affairs'southward mind-set. "I remember I'm somebody that understands marketing," Trump said.

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

The trademark became effective on July 14, 2015, a calendar month later on 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 aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP principal rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America great again" into their own speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off end-and-desist letters.

Trump'south cerise trucker cap featuring the Make America Keen Once more slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Postal service)

More than only a hat

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one abiding, it ofttimes seemed, was "Make America Great Once more."

"I didn't know it was going to catch on like information technology did. It'south been astonishing," Trump said. "The hat, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't y'all say?"

There were enough of snickers when his Federal Ballot Committee filings showed that his entrada was spending more on "Make America Swell 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 excellent keepsakes for those who idea his populist bravado could overcome Clinton'south unimaginative and conventional simply well-oiled political motorcar."

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

"In the Manner section, it was the ornament — what do y'all 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 cerise hats," he exulted.

As is often the case, Trump's description is more than a lilliputian hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "one-time-school" caps had become "the ironic must-have way accompaniment of the summer," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny ability to capture the current absurdist political moment."

None of which fazed the glory 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 bones models sold through his campaign website were priced at $25.

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

"It was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by x to one. It was knocked off by others. But information technology was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys one, that's an ad."

However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Slap-up Again" caught on. It was the most effective kind of political bulletin, bite-sized and visceral.

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

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

That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's campaign — for all its poll testing and loftier-priced advice from Madison Artery — struggled to articulate.

Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election entrada slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," according to an e-mail from the account of entrada chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.

What they were up against was zip brusque of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's principal political strategist. Trump "understood the marketplace that he was trying to achieve. You 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 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 Mail, Trump shared a chip of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

"Are y'all gear up?" he said. " 'Proceed America Smashing,' exclamation point."

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

Two minutes later, one arrived.

"Will yous trademark and annals, if you would, if you similar it — I think I similar it, correct? Do this: 'Keep America Great,' with an exclamation bespeak. With and without an assertion. 'Continue America Neat,' " Trump said.

"Got it," the lawyer replied.

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

"I never thought I'd exist giving [you] my expression for four years [from at present]," he said. "Simply I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be so amazing. It'southward the simply reason I give information technology to you. If I was, like, ambiguous near it, if I wasn't certain nearly what is going to happen — the country 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 great president has to practise with a lot of things, simply one of them is existence a cracking cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as we build up our military, we're going to display our military.

"That military machine may come up marching downwards 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.

But Trump acknowledged that slogans and showmanship will non be the ultimate tests of whether the state is "great again."

The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the adjacent four years: building stronger borders, keeping the state safety against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Act, replacing information technology with something ameliorate, promoting excellence in engineering and scientific discipline, investing in modern infrastructure.

Ultimately, information technology will exist up to the people for whom "Brand America Great Over again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived up to his promise.

"I call up they take to feel information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Beingness a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, but you still accept to produce the results."

"Honestly, y'all haven't seen annihilation yet. Wait till y'all meet what happens, starting next Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great things."

Read more:

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Surprisingly, Trump inauguration shapes up to be a relatively low-central thing

'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