List of Politicians That Used the Make America Great Again Slogan
President-elect Donald Trump poses for a portrait at Trump Tower on January. 17. (Matt McClain/The Washington Postal service)
"Make America Great Over again."
The four words that would help propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years before, when inappreciably anyone simply Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States.
Information technology happened on November. 7, 2012, the day after Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against 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.
But on the 26th floor of a gilded Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the decision that his ain moment was at mitt.
And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought about was how to brand it.
I after some other, phrases popped into his head. "We Volition Make America Great." That i did not have the right ring. Then, "Brand America Great." Simply that sounded like a slight to the land.
So, it hitting him: "Brand America Dandy Again."
"I said, 'That is so expert.' I wrote it down," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I take a lot of lawyers in-house. We have many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'See if yous can take this registered and trademarked.' "
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
V days after, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to utilise "Make America Great Again" for "political activity committee 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 accept to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Great Again" was divisive and backward-looking. Information technology made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.
It sounded like a death wish.
But Trump had seen something unlike in the land, 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's security, whether it'south police force and social club or lack of law and lodge. Then, of course, yous get to merchandise, and I said to myself, 'What would exist good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am correct now, and I said, 'Make America Great Once more.' "
Democrats slammed it.
"If yous're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm non your candidate. I think there is more than right than wrong," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think nosotros have to make America dandy. I call up nosotros take to make America greater."
Her husband, onetime president Pecker Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist domestic dog whistle.
"I'g actually erstwhile enough to recall the adept 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 keen again' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don't y'all?"
The slogan itself was non entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.West. Bush had used "Allow's Brand America Bully Again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a year ago.
"Simply he didn't trademark it," Trump said of Reagan.
His conclusion to merits legal buying reflected a man of affairs'south heed-set. "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 than 80 countries.
The trademark became effective on July xiv, 2015, a month after Trump formally appear his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was actually using it for the purposes spelled out in his awarding.
Having won the trademark, Trump was aggressive in protecting his idea. When his GOP primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "brand America great again" into their own speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.
Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Make America Corking Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
More than simply a hat
Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic entrada. The one constant, information technology frequently seemed, was "Make America Corking Again."
"I didn't know information technology was going to catch on like it did. Information technology's been astonishing," Trump said. "The chapeau, I guess, is the biggest symbol, wouldn't you say?"
At that place were enough of snickers when his Federal Ballot Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Make America Slap-up Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or television receiver ads.
"An appropriate icon for his declining campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats will brand fantabulous keepsakes for those who thought his populist blowing could overcome Clinton'south unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political machine."
Trump saw the hats equally 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 phone call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the twelvemonth. Y'all know the hat. Y'all'd run into people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing ruby-red hats," he exulted.
As is often the case, Trump's description is more than than a little hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "former-schoolhouse" caps had become "the ironic must-take manner accessory of the summer," favored by hipsters for their "uncanny power 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 2022 trip to the Mexican border — 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 we sell? Does anyone know? Millions!" Trump said in the interview.
"Information technology was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by ten to one. It was knocked off by others. But it was a slogan, and every fourth dimension somebody buys one, that'south an advert."
However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Bully Over again" caught on. Information technology was the most effective kind of political message, seize with teeth-sized and visceral.
"Information technology really inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, information technology meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant armed services force. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."
[When was America great? It depends on who y'all are.]
That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's entrada — for all its poll testing and high-priced advice from Madison Artery — struggled to articulate.
Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election campaign slogan earlier settling on "Stronger Together," according to an email from the account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.
What they were upwardly against was nothing curt of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama's principal political strategist. Trump "understood the market place that he was trying to reach. You can't deny him that. He was very focused from the showtime on who he was talking to."
While Clinton carried the pop vote, Trump lined up the states 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 Mail, Trump shared a scrap of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.
"Are you gear up?" he said. " 'Go on America Bang-up,' exclamation point."
"Get me my lawyer!" the president-elect shouted.
Ii minutes later on, i arrived.
"Will you lot trademark and register, if you would, if you lot like it — I remember I like information technology, right? Do this: 'Go on America Great,' with an exclamation point. 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 4 years [from now]," he said. "Merely I am so confident that we are going to be, it is going to be so amazing. It'due south the merely reason I give it to yous. If I was, like, ambiguous well-nigh it, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen — the country is going to exist neat."
All of which raises the questions: How can greatness be measured and sensed? What does it even mean?
"Beingness a great president has to practise with a lot of things, but i of them is beingness a swell cheerleader for the state," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as we build upwardly our military machine, we're going to brandish our military.
"That military may come up marching downwardly Pennsylvania Avenue. That armed forces 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 will not be the ultimate tests of whether the country is "keen again."
The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the state safety against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Human activity, replacing it with something better, promoting excellence in engineering and scientific discipline, investing in modernistic infrastructure.
Ultimately, information technology will be up to the people for whom "Brand America Slap-up Once more" was a covenant, non a slogan, to make up one's mind whether the 45th president has lived up to his promise.
"I think they have to feel it," Trump acknowledged. "Beingness a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, but you nonetheless have to produce the results."
"Honestly, yous haven't seen anything yet. Wait till you lot see what happens, starting next Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great things."
Read more:
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Alice Crites contributed to this study.
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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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