Donald Trump Make America Great Again Gif

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

"Make America Great Again."

The four words that would assist propel Donald Trump to the White House were an inspiration born years before, when hardly anyone only Trump himself could imagine him taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States.

It happened on Nov. vii, 2012, the day after Manus 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 in the Oval Office again.

Just on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan belfry that bears his name, Trump was coming to the decision that his ain moment was at hand.

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

One later on another, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Corking." That one did not take the right ring. So, "Make America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the country.

And and then, information technology hit him: "Make America Corking Again."

"I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote information technology downward," Trump recalled in an interview. "I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. Nosotros have many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, 'Encounter if you can accept this registered and trademarked.' "

(Alice Li/The Washington Mail service)

Five days subsequently, Trump signed an application with the U.Due south. Patent and Trademark Part, in which he asked for exclusive rights to utilise "Make America Keen 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 time — in fact, information technology was "much the opposite," Trump said.

To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, get kinder and more inclusive. "Brand America Bully Over again" was divisive and astern-looking. It fabricated no nod to variety or civility or progress.

It sounded like a death wish.

Only 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 illness our land had, and whether it's at the border, whether information technology'south security, whether it's constabulary and order or lack of law and order. Then, of grade, you get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be good?' I was sitting at my desk-bound, where I am right at present, and I said, 'Make America Great Again.' "

Democrats slammed it.

"If you're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'm not your candidate. I think there is more than correct than wrong," Autonomous nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't think we have to make America corking. I recollect nosotros have to make America greater."

Her husband, one-time president Bill Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist dog whistle.

"I'm really sometime 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 great again' is if you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don't you?"

The slogan itself was non entirely original. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had used "Permit'south Make America Slap-up Once more" in their 1980 campaign — a fact that Trump maintained he did not know until almost a year ago.

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

His determination to claim legal ownership reflected a businessman's mind-set. "I remember I'g 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 constructive on July 14, 2015, a month after Trump formally announced his campaign and met the legal requirement that he was really using it for the purposes spelled out in his awarding.

Having won the trademark, Trump was ambitious 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 cease-and-desist messages.

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

More than than but a chapeau

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic entrada. The one constant, it often seemed, was "Make America Neat Again."

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

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

"An appropriate icon for his declining entrada," the Washington Examiner'south Philip Wegmann wrote in late Oct. "The millions of hats will make excellent keepsakes for those who thought his populist blowing could overcome Clinton's unimaginative and conventional but well-oiled political automobile."

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 Manner Week, no less.

"In the Style department, information technology was the ornament — what do you call that? — an accessory. They said the accessory of the year. You lot know the hat. Yous'd see people going to the fanciest balls at the Waldorf Astoria wearing red hats," he exulted.

Every bit is often the instance, Trump'south description is more than a footling hyperbolic. What the newspaper actually wrote was that the "erstwhile-school" caps had become "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 celebrity billionaire who had debuted the hats by wearing one during a July 2015 trip to the Mexican edge — or the legions of supporters who raced to snap them upward. 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.

"Information technology was copied, unfortunately. It was knocked off by 10 to one. It was knocked off by others. Simply it was a slogan, and every time somebody buys one, that's an advertizement."

However many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Make America Great Once more" defenseless on. It was the nearly effective kind of political bulletin, seize with teeth-sized and visceral.

"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "because to me, it 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 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 entrada slogan before settling on "Stronger Together," according to an email from the account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.

What they were upwards confronting was nix curt of "a marketing genius," said David Axelrod, who had been Obama'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 start on who he was talking to."

While Clinton carried the pop vote, Trump lined up usa he needed to win what mattered: the balloter 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 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. " 'Keep America Great,' exclamation indicate."

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

2 minutes later, one arrived.

"Will you trademark and register, if you would, if you like it — I recall I like it, correct? Do this: 'Go along America Bang-up,' with an exclamation point. With and without an assertion. 'Keep America Keen,' " Trump said.

"Got it," the lawyer replied.

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

"I never idea I'd exist giving [you] my expression for four years [from at present]," he said. "Only I am so confident that we are going to be, information technology is going to be so amazing. Information technology'southward the only reason I give it to you. If I was, like, ambiguous nigh it, if I wasn't certain about what is going to happen — the country is going to be keen."

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

"Beingness a not bad president has to practise with a lot of things, but i of them is being a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as we build up our war machine, we're going to display our military machine.

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

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

The president-elect has an ambitious to-practice list for the adjacent four years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe confronting terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Intendance Human action, replacing it with something better, promoting excellence in applied science and science, investing in modern infrastructure.

Ultimately, it will exist upward to the people for whom "Make America Great Again" was a covenant, not a slogan, to decide whether the 45th president has lived up to his hope.

"I call up they have to feel it," Trump best-selling. "Beingness a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, but you notwithstanding take to produce the results."

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

Read more than:

Trump'due south Cabinet nominees go on 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 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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