Trump Quote Make Amereca Great Again

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

"Brand America Bang-up Over again."

The four words that would aid propel Donald Trump to the White Firm were an inspiration born years earlier, when hardly anyone but Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of role as the 45th president of the United States.

It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the day after Hand 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 ever sit down in the Oval Part again.

Just on the 26th floor of a gilded Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the determination that his own moment was at hand.

And in typical fashion, the outset affair he idea near was how to brand it.

One after another, phrases popped into his caput. "We Volition Brand America Great." That ane did not have the right ring. Then, "Make America Not bad." But that sounded like a slight to the country.

Then, information technology striking him: "Brand America Great Again."

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

(Alice Li/The Washington Post)

Five days later on, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Brand America Great Again" for "political action commission services, namely, promoting public sensation of political issues 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 fourth dimension — in fact, it was "much the reverse," 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 Smashing Once more" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.

It sounded similar a decease wish.

But Trump had seen something dissimilar 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 affliction our state had, and whether information technology'south at the border, whether information technology's security, whether it'south law and order or lack of constabulary and order. Then, of course, you get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be proficient?' I was sitting at my desk-bound, where I am correct at present, and I said, 'Make America Great Over again.' "

Democrats slammed it.

"If you lot're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm non your candidate. I recollect in that location is more than right than incorrect," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't call back nosotros have to brand America neat. I think we take to make America greater."

Her married man, former president Pecker Clinton, went and so far as to declare information technology a racist dog whistle.

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

The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.Westward. Bush had used "Let'south Make America Swell Again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a year agone.

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

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

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

The trademark became effective on July xiv, 2015, a calendar month after Trump formally announced his entrada 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 primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America great once more" into their own speeches, Trump'southward lawyers fired off cease-and-desist messages.

Trump's red trucker cap featuring the Make America Slap-up Again slogan was ubiquitious during the campaign. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Mail)

More than than just a hat

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The ane abiding, it often 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?"

At that place were plenty of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more than on "Make America Cracking Again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or telly ads.

"An advisable icon for his failing campaign," the Washington Examiner's Philip Wegmann wrote in late October. "The millions of hats will brand excellent keepsakes for those who idea his populist bravado could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political machine."

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

"In the Style section, information technology was the ornament — what do yous telephone call that? — an accessory. They said the accompaniment of the year. You know the hat. You'd come across people going to the fanciest assurance at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.

As is frequently the case, Trump's description is more than a little hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "sometime-school" caps had get "the ironic must-accept fashion accessory 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 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 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. It was knocked off by 10 to one. Information technology was knocked off by others. Merely it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that's an advertisement."

Withal many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Keen Over again" caught on. It was the most effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.

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

[When was America bully? It depends on who yous are.]

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

Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election campaign slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," co-ordinate to an email from the business relationship of campaign 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'south chief political strategist. Trump "understood the marketplace that he was trying to reach. You can'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 upward 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 Post, Trump shared a bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

"Are you set up?" he said. " 'Go along America Great,' assertion point."

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

Ii minutes later, one arrived.

"Will y'all trademark and register, if yous would, if you like it — I retrieve I like it, right? Practice this: 'Keep America Swell,' with an exclamation indicate. 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 exist giving [yous] my expression for iv years [from now]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to be, information technology is going to exist so astonishing. Information technology'due south the only reason I give it to you. If I was, like, ambiguous about it, if I wasn't sure almost what is going to happen — the country is going to exist bully."

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

"Being a great president has to exercise with a lot of things, but 1 of them is being a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to evidence the people as we build up our war machine, nosotros're going to display our military.

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

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

The president-elect has an ambitious to-practice list for the side by side 4 years: building stronger borders, keeping the country condom confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Human activity, replacing it with something better, promoting excellence in engineering and scientific discipline, investing in modern infrastructure.

Ultimately, it will be up to the people for whom "Make America Dandy Once more" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived up to his hope.

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

"Honestly, you haven't seen anything yet. Await till you see what happens, starting adjacent Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Cracking things."

Read more:

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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