Trump Tuesday Speech Make America Dank Again

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

"Make America Great Over again."

The four words that would assistance propel Donald Trump to the White Business firm were an inspiration born years before, when inappreciably anyone merely Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States.

It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the twenty-four hours after Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to exist 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 once again.

But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his proper name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his ain moment was at hand.

And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought near was how to make it.

One after another, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Great." That one did not accept the right ring. Then, "Make America Neat." Only that sounded like a slight to the country.

And then, it striking him: "Brand America Great Again."

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

(Alice Li/The Washington Post)

Five days later, Trump signed an application with the U.South. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to utilise "Make America Great Once again" for "political action committee 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 time — in fact, information technology was "much the contrary," Trump said.

To salvage itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, become kinder and more than inclusive. "Brand America Peachy Once more" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to multifariousness or civility or progress.

It sounded similar a decease wish.

But Trump had seen something different 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 affliction our country had, and whether it'south at the border, whether information technology'due south security, whether it's law and gild or lack of law and order. And then, of grade, you get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would exist good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Great Over again.' "

Democrats slammed information technology.

"If you're looking for someone to say what is incorrect with America, I'grand not your candidate. I think there is more right than wrong," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we have to make America not bad. I remember we have to make America greater."

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

"I'one thousand really old enough to remember the good old 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 groovy over again' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it ways, don't you?"

The slogan itself was not entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush-league had used "Allow'south Make America Cracking Again" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until about a twelvemonth ago.

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

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

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

The trademark became effective 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 aggressive in protecting his thought. When his GOP principal rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America great again" into their ain speeches, Trump'due south lawyers fired off cease-and-desist letters.

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

More than just a hat

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one constant, it frequently seemed, was "Brand America Smashing Again."

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

There were enough of snickers when his Federal Election Commission filings showed that his campaign was spending more on "Brand America Groovy 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 belatedly October. "The millions of hats will brand excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist blowing could overcome Clinton'south unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political machine."

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

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

Equally is oft the case, Trump'due south clarification is more than a footling hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "old-school" caps had become "the ironic must-have fashion accompaniment of the summer," favored past hipsters for their "uncanny ability to capture the electric current absurdist political moment."

None of which fazed the glory billionaire who had debuted the hats by wearing 1 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 entrada 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 past x to 1. Information technology was knocked off past others. Only it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys 1, that's an advertisement."

However many hats he sold, what cannot exist disputed is that "Make America Great Once more" defenseless on. It was the most constructive kind of political bulletin, bite-sized and visceral.

"Information technology really inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant war machine strength. 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 loftier-priced communication from Madison Avenue — struggled to articulate.

Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general-election entrada slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," according 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'due south chief political strategist. Trump "understood the market that he was trying to reach. 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 upwards 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 information technology single-mindedly and ingeniously."

Thinking reelection

Halfway through his interview with The Washington Post, Trump shared a fleck of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

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

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

Ii minutes later, i arrived.

"Will you trademark and register, if yous would, if yous like it — I think I like information technology, right? Practise this: 'Keep America Smashing,' with an exclamation point. With and without an exclamation. 'Keep America Peachy,' " Trump said.

"Got it," the lawyer replied.

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

"I never thought I'd be giving [y'all] my expression for four years [from at present]," he said. "But I am so confident that nosotros are going to be, it is going to be then astonishing. It's the merely reason I give it to you lot. If I was, similar, ambiguous almost it, if I wasn't sure well-nigh what is going to happen — the country is going to be great."

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

"Being a swell president has to practise with a lot of things, just i of them is beingness a great cheerleader for the state," Trump said. "And nosotros're going to show the people as we build up our military, we're going to brandish our military.

"That military may come marching downwardly Pennsylvania Avenue. That armed services may exist flying over New York Metropolis and Washington, D.C., for parades. I hateful, we're going to exist showing our military," he added.

But Trump best-selling that slogans and showmanship will not exist the ultimate tests of whether the state is "great once more."

The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the side by side iv years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Human activity, replacing information technology with something better, promoting excellence in engineering and science, investing in modern infrastructure.

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

"I recollect they have to feel information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Existence a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very of import, but you even so accept to produce the results."

"Honestly, you haven't seen anything yet. Wait till you see what happens, starting next Mon," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great things."

Read more:

Trump's Cabinet nominees proceed contradicting him

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