Make America Great Again Hat Front
How the Trump hat became an icon
Updated 1933 GMT (0333 HKT) Feb 17, 2017
Washington (CNN)They were everywhere on Inauguration Day.
Vivid red hats emblazoned with the words "Make America Great Once more" dominated the crowd celebrating in front of the Capitol. The hats were a powerful reminder of the dramatic alter in ability about to unfold in Washington and became prized possessions for some of Trump'due south supporters.
Mark Stroman bought five hats from a street vendor for friends back abode in Los Angeles, acknowledging the political divide the dress represented.
"I recollect that they brought some divisiveness," Stroman said. "They made a bully carve up betwixt Democrats and Republicans but I remember they made people pay attention, they made people wake upward."
Campaign swag is easy to dismiss, but Trump'due south hat captured how his candidacy disrupted and divided the country. Similar many things in Trump's campaign, it's hard to conclude at that place was a thousand strategy that led to its success. But its connection with voters -- for good or bad -- is undeniable.
Hither'due south the story of how the hat became one of the most powerful symbols in modern American politics.
Owning a slogan
There were no marketing experts or pattern research involved in the initial idea for the hat, co-ordinate to quondam campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
"I think somebody actually sent us a sample," Lewandowski told CNN. "They brought that sample to Donald Trump and he said, 'I like information technology, let'southward tweak this, let's do it differently.'"
Lewandowski said they tried out dissimilar prototypes, dissimilar size fonts and styles before they landed on a keeper. Subsequently that, the hats were kept on Trump's plane at all times.
It was a little more than a month after he announced his candidacy that Trump get-go donned the hat in public at a entrada result. When he made a much-publicized trip to Laredo, Texas, in July 2015 to visit the U.s.-United mexican states border, the hot weather condition necessitated a more coincidental wait than his usual suit and necktie.
"Only for the sweat gene and other things, he chose to article of clothing the hat," Lewandowski said.
At the time, Trump was caught up in a tornado of controversy, from questioning Sen. John McCain'south condition as a war hero to speculation nigh running as a third-party candidate and a Edge Patrol wedlock backing out of the visit at the final moment.
A beat of reporters waited for Trump in the pocket-size last of the airport when Trump'due south plane touched down.
"He came around the corner and we all went, 'Oh!,' CNN's Chief Political Contributor Dana Fustigate, who covered the consequence, remembered. "I really call up it vividly considering it was like, 'Oh, of course, he's the master marketer. Why wouldn't he put it on a hat?'"
Trump briefly visited the border, and talked to the cameras three carve up times, holding along on his signature event of immigration. In every shot, his brand was impossible to miss.
Bash was besides surprised to notice Trump was wearing white golf game shoes, eliciting a "crisis crisis" noise as he walked out to a podium.
The hat itself may have been a fluke, merely the slogan had a deeper history with Trump.
He started using the phrase every bit far back as 2011. It took on new meaning for Trump, however, in the wake of Hand Romney's defeat in 2012. In both style and substance, Trump felt Romney failed to projection a positive vision of American forcefulness. Simply six days later on that election, Trump signed paperwork to trademark the phrase "Make America Great Again."
"He was in that chair -- that iconic chair he has in his office on the 26th floor of Trump Belfry -- and he looked upwards and he said, 'My slogan is going to be Make American Great Once again,'" Sam Nunberg, a former campaign aide who helped lay the groundwork for Trump's run, told CNN. "He looked up at the ceiling with a smirk on his face, and he said, 'And watch, everybody's going to love it.' He was right."
Trump'due south opponent, Hillary Clinton, criticized the slogan every bit harkening back to an abstruse fourth dimension in American history, calling it a "cruel fantasy." The phrase has been used in the past past Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and even Clinton's husband, Pecker Clinton.
Only in the history books, the slogan will belong to Trump.
Trademark applications typically accept a long fourth dimension to process. Trump didn't receive the "Brand America Smashing Again" trademark until July 2015, only in time for the trip to Laredo.
Confusing technology
"It'due south merely a disruptive technology," Lewandowski told CNN of the campaign hats. "People who weren't involved in politics, that didn't take a political groundwork, wanted to show their support for something different and their way to do that was to buy hats."
The hats are sold in a range of colors, but Trump has shown an affinity for the red hat, besides as the white hat and a camo-style hat with orange font.
Trump was struck past the ubiquity of the hats, from rallies in rural America to formal GOP donor dinners, Lewandowski says. And however, for all its resonance with supporters, the design almost seemed similar an afterthought.
"It was united nations-designed," Lindsey Ballant, a designer and adjunct professor at the Maryland Higher of Art, told CNN. "It didn't represent what one thinks of when you think of traditional politics in terms of visual messaging, and that's essentially what Trump was as well."
The type is default, Times New Roman, the color pattern is bones, and the manner, sitting oddly high on the head with a slender rope stretching across the front, matches the hats Trump has long worn on his golf game courses.
"In contrast, Hillary'southward campaign was incredibly idea out. It was elaborate. There was a whole organisation driven around the simplicity and the beauty of the logo marker," Ballant says of Trump's opponent's campaign.
Trump's campaign knew they wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the hat, spending more than $2.eight 1000000 on hats from Los Angeles-based company Cali-fame, fifty-fifty every bit political operatives mocked them.
"Information technology invited attacks from the left in a way that fit correct into what I think the Trump campaign and the Trump organization wanted, which is a disharmonism of those 2 political civilizations that they believed worked in their favor," Republican strategist and CNN contributor Kevin Madden said.
Lewandowski said information technology wasn't piece of cake to notice a Usa company to produce the hats. They sell for $20-$thirty and cheaper knock-offs from countries like Communist china and People's republic of bangladesh are common.
"Mr. Trump signs a lot of hats and he knows the difference," Lewandowsi told CNN. "He'd say to me, 'You know, out of ten hats I signed, eight of them are 1 of the knock-offs.' He's similar, 'How practise we go those guys?'"
Cali-fame produces the hats now sold on Trump's website, and the ones seen on his head, but Trump's campaign as well bought some hats from companies similar Ace Specialties LLC and Saying Advertizing, according to finance reports.
If one wanders into the small store in the basement of Trump Tower, there is a corner devoted to campaign swag, featuring the classic hat as well as new versions unveiled after the ballot. The cashier there is careful to turn abroad whatever potential buyers who are not The states citizens, every bit a buy of the hat is considered a campaign contribution for Trump's re-election.
The hats are a physical connection between Trump and many of his rural and working grade supporters, but they also continue to be a target for anti-Trump sentiment, from the many parodies of the hat, to protesters burning one at the inauguration.
No thing what emotion it inspires, the hat, one time described by The New York Times as an "ironic summer accessory," has cemented its place in history. Both a cherry-red and white chapeau sat well-nigh the stage, enclosed in glass, at Trump's election night party.
"If I were ever going to pattern a Trump presidential library, and somebody said what'southward the artifact you most desire, I would say the original lid of Donald Trump's under glass," presidential Douglas Brinkley told CNN. "The whole campaign can exist summed up in his nerveless Twitters, and that ball cap."
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/17/politics/donald-trump-make-america-great-again-iconic-hat/index.html
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