Immigration Reform That Will Make America Great Again ã¢â‚¬â Trump Campaign Document 2016

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

"Make America Great Once more."

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

It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the mean solar day subsequently Manus Romney lost what had been presumed to exist a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, ane that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Office again.

But on the 26th floor of a gilt Manhattan belfry that bears his proper noun, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at paw.

And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought about was how to brand it.

One subsequently another, phrases popped into his head. "We Will Make America Corking." That one did not have the right ring. Then, "Brand America Great." But that sounded like a slight to the state.

And and so, it hit him: "Brand America Great Again."

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

(Alice Li/The Washington Post)

V days later, Trump signed an awarding with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use "Make America Great Again" for "political action group 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 reverse," Trump said.

To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. "Make America Great Over again" was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.

It sounded like a death wish.

But 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 illness our state had, and whether it'southward at the border, whether it'southward security, whether it'south law and order or lack of law and order. Then, of class, you get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would exist skillful?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Corking Over again.' "

Democrats slammed information technology.

"If y'all're looking for someone to say what is wrong with America, I'thousand not your candidate. I think at that place is more right than wrong," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said. "I don't recall we have to brand America smashing. I think we take to make America greater."

Her husband, quondam president Neb Clinton, went so far as to declare it a racist dog whistle.

"I'm actually former plenty to remember the proficient old days, and they weren't all that good in many means," 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 lot know exactly what it means, don't you?"

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

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

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

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

The trademark became effective on July fourteen, 2015, a calendar 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 application.

Having won the trademark, Trump was ambitious in protecting his thought. When his GOP primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began tucking "make America corking once more" into their ain speeches, Trump's lawyers fired off terminate-and-desist messages.

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

More than than just a hat

Trump was an impulsive and erratic candidate who ran a chaotic campaign. The one abiding, it oft seemed, was "Make America Swell Again."

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

In that location were enough of snickers when his Federal Election Committee filings showed that his entrada was spending more on "Make America Keen Over again" trucker caps than on polling, political consultants, staff or tv set ads.

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

Trump saw the hats as a fundraising and advertizement vehicle. He was thrilled when his campaign headgear landed in the New York Times Way section — during Manner Calendar week, no less.

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

Every bit is often the case, Trump's description is more than than a lilliputian hyperbolic. What the paper actually wrote was that the "former-schoolhouse" caps had become "the ironic must-have fashion accessory of the summer," favored past hipsters for their "uncanny power to capture the current absurdist political moment."

None of which fazed the celebrity 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 upwards. 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 past x to one. It was knocked off past others. But information technology was a slogan, and every time somebody buys ane, that's an advertisement."

Nonetheless many hats he sold, what cannot be disputed is that "Brand America Bully Over again" caught on. Information technology was the nigh effective kind of political message, bite-sized and visceral.

"It actually inspired me," Trump said, "considering to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military force. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant then much."

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

That kind of mission statement was something that Clinton's entrada — for all its poll testing and high-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 account of campaign chairman John Podesta that was published by WikiLeaks.

What they were upward confronting 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 achieve. You can't deny him that. He was very focused from the showtime 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 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 bit of news: He already has decided on his slogan for a reelection bid in 2020.

"Are you ready?" he said. " 'Keep America Keen,' exclamation indicate."

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

Ii minutes afterward, one arrived.

"Will you trademark and register, if y'all would, if yous like information technology — I call up I like information technology, right? Do this: 'Keep America Bully,' with an exclamation signal. With and without an exclamation. 'Proceed America Great,' " 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 [y'all] my expression for four years [from at present]," he said. "But I am so confident that we are going to exist, information technology is going to be and so amazing. It's the only reason I requite information technology to you lot. If I was, similar, ambiguous about information technology, if I wasn't sure about what is going to happen — the country is going to exist keen."

All of which raises the questions: How tin can greatness be measured and sensed? What does information technology even hateful?

"Being a great president has to exercise with a lot of things, only one of them is being a not bad cheerleader for the land," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as we build upwards our armed forces, we're going to brandish our military.

"That military machine may come marching downwards Pennsylvania Artery. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, 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 land is "bully again."

The president-elect has an ambitious to-do list for the next four years: building stronger borders, keeping the country safe against terrorism, producing more jobs, repealing the Affordable Care Human action, replacing it with something better, promoting excellence in technology and science, investing in modernistic infrastructure.

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

"I think they accept to feel information technology," Trump acknowledged. "Being a cheerleader or a salesman for the country is very important, simply you nonetheless have to produce the results."

"Honestly, you haven't seen anything withal. Await till you run into what happens, starting next Monday," he said. "A lot of things are going to happen. Great things."

Read more than:

Trump's Cabinet nominees keep contradicting him

Surprisingly, Trump inauguration shapes upwardly 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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