Donald Trump hadn’t fully ruled out running in 2012, but his window was closing and the presidential primary was continuing without him. He kept up his speaking engagements even if he didn’t get attention from a press corps that moved on to Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney. David Bossie reminded Trump to donate money to Republican politicians, and candidates visited Trump Tower to seek the mogul’s endorsement.
Trump wanted to stay a player in the primary process. On December 2, 2011, he agreed to moderate a GOP candidates forum hosted by Newsmax and Ion Television in Iowa later that month. Only two candidates, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, agreed to participate. Various GOP officials, indicating that they still thought of Trump’s political forays as a sideshow, predicted the debate would be “a circus.”1
By December 9, Trump backed out, saying other candidates would not agree to come unless he guaranteed he wouldn’t become an independent candidate. In a statement distributed to the press by his increasingly prominent lawyer, Michael Cohen, Trump for the first time used a phrase that would become his campaign rallying cry.2
It is very important to me that the right Republican candidate be chosen to defeat the failed and very destructive Obama administration, but if that Republican, in my opinion, is not the right candidate, I am not willing to give up my right to run as an independent candidate.… I must leave all of my options open because, above all else, we must make America great again!
Although the slogan Make America Great Again had been around at least since candidate Ronald Reagan issued buttons saying “Let’s Make America Great Again” during his 1980 run, and Bill Clinton used it in his campaign launch speech in 1991, it seemed dormant over the next two decades. Journalist Peter Beinart’s 2006 book was The Good Fight: Why Liberals and Only Liberals Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. But perhaps most relevant for Trump, the phrase was part of the subtitle of a 2011 book by 2010 Tea Party Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, Troublemaker: What It Takes to Make America Great Again. O’Donnell received media attention for her phenomenal rise in politics and then, in the last days of her unsuccessful campaign, for the release of a clip showing her saying that in college she had “dabbled in witchcraft.”3 O’Donnell’s book landed her an interview on Sean Hannity’s Fox show in August 2011, four months before the phrase became part of Trump’s lexicon.4 The way the slogan entered Trump’s consciousness might be a mashup of all of the above plus the fact that in introducing Trump for an interview on December 6, 2011, three days before the phrase appeared in the Trump press release, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren said he “just wrote a new book spelling out his ideas to make America great. It’s called Time to Get Tough.”5
Before Christmas 2011, Michael Cohen announced that Trump had switched his party affiliation from Republican to independent “to preserve his right to run [for president] as an independent after the finale of The Apprentice in May.”6 Then, on December 30, paperwork was filed with the Texas secretary of state’s office to create the “Make America Great Again Party,” reportedly to allow Trump to run as an independent presidential candidate in the state.7
Via a telephone call to the morning show Fox and Friends on January 2, 2012, Trump denied that he had orchestrated the Texas registration but said, “Frankly I think it’s a great name … because that’s what it’s all about, making America great.”
He would sign a trademark application for “Make America Great Again” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the purpose of “promoting public awareness of political issues and fundraising in the field of politics” on November 12, 2012, six days after the election.8
Members of Trump’s political circle recall the phrase arising at different times. In their campaign memoir, David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski report hearing it at a New Hampshire rally in 2014, “the first time he had used the words as a rallying cry,” and Trump wearing it on a white baseball cap at a Laredo, Texas, rally in July 2015.9
Sam Nunberg: Trump told me he was going to be using that as early as I can recall, as early as 2013. I’m talking January, February was when I first heard about it. He said he was going to say it. I said, “Fine, great.”
John McLaughlin: At one of our meetings at his office [in May 2016], it was just he and I, and I gave him an old Reagan/Bush “Let’s Make America Great” button and he says, “Oh, but you see, this is different. It says ‘Let’s Make America Great Again.’ I just say, ‘Make America Great Again.’” He thought the “Let’s” was too passive. He said “Make America Great Again” is the right way to do it.
In January 2012, as the phrase was percolating and Trump was finally letting go of the idea of running for president that cycle, Mitt Romney surged ahead of the GOP field in the polls as his rivals began fading.10 Trump’s poll numbers remained low—47 percent of independents had an unfavorable opinion of him, while only 41 percent liked him in a December 2011 Washington Post/ABC News poll.11 Trump still wanted to remain a player in the election. That meant endorsing a candidate and speaking at the Republican National Convention, where he could strengthen his standing as a conservative leader. His aides were split on strategy. Michael Cohen wanted him to back Romney, while Roger Stone and Sam Nunberg advised against it, fearing his association with a moderate.
Sam Nunberg: All these presidential candidates start visiting Trump in 2011. They want his endorsement.
David Bossie: One of the things I did during the ’12 and ’14 cycles was make recommendations to Mr. Trump for campaigns and organizations to donate to, and he did every single gift I came up with. He did dozens and dozens of gifts over that time to Republicans across the country running for Congress, Senate, and governor.
Steve Bannon: I would tease Bossie. Every week I’d say, “Hey, are you going up there for the check signings? How’s that going for you?”
David Bossie: At the end of every quarter I would give a list of names and he would send the checks.
Sam Nunberg: By December [2011], he decides he’s not going to do the registration. He doesn’t want to put up the money for the states. We’re done there but he keeps us around to do his public relations and interviews to keep him involved.
Roger Stone: Michael Cohen was a major factor in his conclusion that Romney couldn’t be stopped for the nomination and was likely to win the presidency. I never agreed with that. It’s hard to know [why Cohen convinced Trump] because I wasn’t in the room when he was pitching this.
Sam Nunberg: The one Roger and I had nothing to do with was Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney was all Michael Cohen. Romney was not his friend. We explained that to Trump.
John McLaughlin: I was encouraging Trump to endorse Romney. It would help his Republican credentials for the future. Romney was not seen as an outsider to the Republicans. This is the nominee, we should get behind him. I was not in favor of running as an independent. Trump was more in touch with the grassroots Republican primary voters than the Republican establishment.
On February 2, 2012, Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney at Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. The presidential hopeful seemed almost embarrassed to be there, clutching his wife Ann Romney’s hand and telling reporters, “There are some things that you can’t imagine happening in your life and this is one of them.”12
In a taut seven-minute speech, Trump promised he would not mount an independent presidential campaign. “It’s my honor, real honor and privilege, to endorse Mitt Romney,” he said. “Mitt is tough. He’s smart. He’s sharp. He’s not going to allow bad things to continue to this country that we love.”13 Michael Cohen, who later raised $500,000 in four hours for Romney, looked on.14
Anthony Scaramucci: I was working for Governor Romney as part of his fundraising team. Mr. Trump was always flirting with the run for the presidency. None of us took it that seriously. I assumed it was a publicity stunt, that he was talking about being a bride but was really going to be a bridesmaid. I saw the endorsement on the news. They looked awkward together.
Roger Stone: I was not in favor of his endorsement of Romney. He knew that. But he’s his own man. It was his decision, not mine, and then we had that weird press conference in Las Vegas in which Romney doesn’t know what to do.
Anthony Scaramucci: In fairness to President Trump, he was very helpful to Governor Romney. He did a lot of robocalls. We did two fundraisers in his beautiful apartment at Trump Tower.
Steve Bannon: After Romney won the nomination, Andrew [Breitbart] went to CPAC. Andrew gave this massive speech about unity with Romney, and then Andrew drops dead three weeks later [on March 1]. I take over Breitbart full time. One of the first things I do is I get Herman Cain into Breitbart Embassy.* I get all 40 Tea Party heads who are all suing each other. Tea Party Nation. Tea Party Express. Tea Party Patriots. All the guys. They’re all suing each other. Everybody thinks the Tea Party is going to be a billion-dollar brand. They’re all grifters to begin with. It’s the only time they ever sat in one room. I said, “You’ve got to lay your weapons down.” Herman Cain sits there, and we spend four hours talking about all the Tea Party issues. Herman Cain’s going to be the emissary to go to the Romney campaign.
Reince Priebus, first time I meet him, comes to Breitbart Embassy and gives a sales pitch for the Republican National Committee and how we’ve got to all work together to win.
Herman Cain never gets a meeting. Matt Rhoades and those guys who ran the Romney campaign completely blew him off. “Go fuck yourself.” Couldn’t care less. Tea Party’s a bunch of white trash. Romney’s not interested.
My partners, particularly Bob Mercer, were so gung-ho on Romney. There’s a Hannity panel in May 2012. It’s Bossie, myself, and seven other smart guys—typical National Review and Weekly Standard guys. Hannity said, “Who thinks Romney’s going to win?” Seven hands go up. Mine doesn’t. He said, “You’re the only one who doesn’t think Romney’s going to win?” “Romney’s going to get crushed,” I said. “Obama’s that good. He’s got no theme. He’s not drawing in the working class. It’s not even close.” Bob Mercer said, “Why’d you say that on TV? It’s the exact opposite. Romney’s going to win.” They all thought that.
Trump recorded phone calls encouraging GOP voters to pick Romney over former senator Rick Santorum but continued to bully Barack Obama over his birth certificate and college records, which concerned the Romney campaign. “I wonder if @BarackObama ever applied to Occidental, Columbia or Harvard as a foreign student. When can we see his applications? What do they say about his place of birth,” Trump tweeted on May 22. “@BarackObama is practically begging @MittRomney to disavow the place of birth movement, he is afraid of it and for good reason,” he wrote a week later. A campaign spokeswoman assured the Washington Post that Romney believes Obama was born in the United States.15
Romney used Trump as a surrogate sparingly over the summer. Trump continued to pick fights with political leaders and Beltway insiders regardless of their affiliation, and flooded his Twitter feed with birther references.
Roger Stone: The Romney people were not so much afraid of Trump, although they should have been. Trump was a wild card within the larger question of getting nominated. Nobody knew if he would really run. Nobody knew if he would support one of the other candidates. They just wanted him off the battlefield.
Justin McConney: His tweeting is becoming more and more rampant. He started calling me on weekends and weeknights and asking me to tweet things—all hours. The first time this had happened was Memorial Day weekend [May 27, 2012]. I thought it was a prank call at first because I see this number pop up and someone gets on the phone. “Hi, it’s Melania,” she said. “Mr. Trump wants to speak to you.” I’m thinking, “This has got to be a joke.” Trump gets on. “George Will just hit me on TV. I have to hit him back. Put this out immediately.”
There were a few other times Melania would call because I don’t think Trump saved my number at that point. He would just start giving me tweets. I’d have to pull over into a parking lot and he’d be on the phone for 15 minutes saying, “What else should we tweet about?” I would make the mistake of sometimes bringing up more things in the news or people that referenced him, giving myself more work to do.
Roger Stone: Michael Cohen once showed up at a Romney rally and he got stopped by the Secret Service because he’s carrying a firearm. I’m sure he had a permit, but who brings a gun into a presidential campaign rally?
Sam Nunberg: The Romney campaign used Trump during the primary when they needed him. They used him in Michigan and they used him in Ohio to beat Rick Santorum. Then we started leaking out that Trump should speak at the convention. He wanted to speak.
Trump desperately wanted to speak at the Republican National Convention in August, but Romney didn’t want him on the stage.
Trump dropped hints, tweeting, “Hmmm … Can you imagine me speaking at the RNC Convention in Tampa? That’s a speech everyone would watch.” The Romney campaign compromised, agreeing to allow Trump to show a video on the convention’s first day.16 Michael Cohen hyped the appearance, telling ABC News, “One would not be shocked to see Donald Trump” at the convention. But Hurricane Isaac barreled into South Florida on August 27, forcing the RNC to cancel the first day of programming.17 Romney would not give Trump another time slot or air the video, which Trump operatives said cost $100,000 to make. Trump flew home disappointed and stewing.18
Justin McConney: I watched them shoot the video. They brought in this guy that was a known Obama impersonator. It was a whole parody of The Apprentice. Trump fires him and he goes back out to the limo.
Sean Spicer, White House communications director January–July 2017: We had to cut short the convention in Tampa because of the weather. There was a hurricane that came through. We cut the programming and that decision was made right there. He was the collateral damage. He and Romney had discussed it. Romney had gone in search of his endorsement, Trump had given it to him, then wanted to speak at the convention.
Sam Nunberg: Romney fucks him on the convention. Romney doesn’t campaign with him during the general. They couldn’t find four fucking minutes to play the video.
Justin McConney: He started talking about more of a variety of topics, which is what I was aiming for to begin with. I had him talking about celebrities and musicians. That’s why his social media took off. He had something to say about anything and everything, and he expanded his audience to a much younger base of people that might not have been as familiar with him. Later on that year he’s tweeting about Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. He talked about Anthony Weiner, but instead of having Trump do a tweet about this—because he wanted to tweet about it—I said, “What if you do a Vine?” He goes, “What’s Vine?” I said, “It’s like those videos we do at the desk, but it’s only six seconds.” He did it. He kept telling everyone, “Justin got me a Vine. It’s amazing. He’s really innovative. He has me ahead of the curve.” The news coverage was, “Donald Trump signs up to join Vine to tell Anthony Weiner to stay off Vine.”
Sam Nunberg: He continually got coverage. Obama even mentioned Trump in the first debate against Romney [on October 4].* Trump loved that. Obama did that because he thought the association with Trump was bad for Romney. They had a campaign ad showing Trump’s plane. We were happy either way.
Justin McConney: When Obama mentioned him, the idea pops in my head that we should live-tweet the second debate because he’s a part of this now. I pitched it to him and he said, “Alright, how exactly are we going to do this?” I said, “I guess we can do this on the phone.” We had to call each other back and forth and I would put the tweets out.
He went along with the idea, but I don’t think he imagined how much interest there would be in it. I called him a few times and said, “Mr. Trump, I need another comment from you.” When you live-tweet something, you kind of got to be tweeting every three minutes. He thought it was very funny that we were getting all these tweets from people. “Where are you Trump? Where’d you go?” We gained a lot of followers in a single night. Then we live-tweeted the third debate by phone. He kept calling me more and more wanting to tweet all hours. He wanted to see more of the mentions to see what people were saying.
On October 24, Trump made one last attempt to goad Obama by tweeting a video of himself offering $5 million to a charity of the president’s choice if he coughed up his college and passport records.19 Obama spokesman David Plouffe sarcastically referred all questions about the announcement to the Romney campaign.20
Justin McConney: I actively discouraged the version he shot. I tried to convince him to reshoot it. He wouldn’t move past the horrible idea, which I didn’t like to begin with, and told him it was terrible. I didn’t like anything to do with the birth certificate. I don’t know why he was still talking about it. I thought it was horrendous. I did not like the idea that it was at his desk because I didn’t want it associated with the “From the Desk of Donald Trump” videos.
Sam Nunberg: We explained to him the issue, Trump saw it, and Trump made an offer to buy it. That’s where he saw that commonsense, gonzo, hard-right American politics works. He makes an offer to buy it and gets himself in the news.
Lloyd Grove, gossip reporter, New York Daily News and the Daily Beast: He went on Fox and Friends and said he was going to make a major announcement at noon. He or his people, Michael Cohen, uploaded a video of him saying he would give five million dollars to the charity of Obama’s choice if Obama would simply provide him with his birth certificate, his academic transcript, and travel records “to my satisfaction,” then he would happily give this money. With my great ability to tap into the zeitgeist and predict events of the future, I said, “That’s it, you’re done. We’re no longer interested in you, you’re a loser.” I wrote a piece about it and suggested the Daily Beast would no longer pay attention to him.
Justin McConney: The birther stuff was a topic I would frequently tell him to stop talking about. Trump would always say, “You’re not a fan of this.” I told him, “No, it’s enough already. Stop bringing it up. It’s stupid.” I tried to get him to stay away from it as much as possible, but the thing with Trump and Twitter was you couldn’t stop him. If I didn’t want to put out a tweet with him he would call in someone else and have them put up the tweet. I could tell him as much as I wanted to stay away from that subject or others, but it wasn’t going to change anything.
On November 6, 2012, Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney 51 to 47 percent and trounced him in the Electoral College, winning 332 votes to Romney’s 226. In a flurry of midnight tweets, Trump lamented, “This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!” and warned, “Our country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble … like never before.” He called the Electoral College a “disaster for democracy.”
The next day Trump tweeted, “We have to make America great again.” He told Newsmax that Romney was too “mean-spirited” and that “[Romney] had a crazy policy of self-deportation which was maniacal. It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote. He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”21
Sam Nunberg: I knew Romney was going to lose. Trump hedged. I told him Romney was going to lose. He said it’ll be close. Romney loses. All he ran on was the issues instead of beating the shit out of Obama. Americans will vote for the guy or the girl who’s more likable. Who has more charisma? The 9 out of 10 other fucking issues Romney won on. He lost on that one. He acted like a child in that last debate. Plus, Joe Biden destroyed Paul Ryan.
David Bossie: We were observing Romney’s incredibly disastrous third debate where he had the thing won and he mailed it in and lost. We looked at how he was ineffectual on policy and how he lost a race he should have won. Observing that election defeat sparked an interest in Trump, which catapulted us into 2013 and 2014, when we started to move things along.
Steve Bannon: [Bob Mercer and his Republican donors] all go up to the Ritz-Carlton in Boston on the night of the victory. The defeat of Romney is a crushing blow to the establishment. They all put the money on the guy because that guy is them. He’s better than Obama but it would have been terrible for the populist movement. We had to show they couldn’t win without us. Donald Trump would have never been around if Romney had won. Romney was the last stand.
Sean Spicer: We went up to New York. The [Republican National Committee] chairman [Reince Priebus] was doing a series of donor meetings, and I was doing a series of meetings, and on the schedule it said he was going to meet with Donald Trump. I said, “Do you mind if I sit in on the meeting?” Reince said sure, come along. I had seen him on television and I was intrigued by what he was like in person. I went up to his office, walked in, and Reince is giving his standard pitch of why we need to give to the RNC and what we’re going to do with the money and how we’re going to rebuild the party. Trump goes into an entire analysis of what Romney had done wrong, why the convention wasn’t as successful as it could’ve been, and how he could’ve been used more to rally support for Romney.
Justin McConney: We had gone down to Doral [Resort & Spa in Miami] in November to film a video. I’m on the plane and Trump comes on and starts looking at the iPhone and asks, “What do you prefer, the iPhone or Android?” I said, “I prefer the iPhone.” “You know, I’m thinking of upgrading but the screen is much bigger on Android,” he said. “I’m going to go with the Android. The screen’s bigger.”
I went to sleep and all of a sudden I hear his voice. “Justin. Justin.” I wake up. It’s Trump. “Justin, great news. Melania just told me the WiFi’s working on the plane. You can tweet for me.” Soon after that I hear from people who were on the plane, “He got this Android now and he has Twitter on it, and he’s been playing around with it in his office.” I said, “There’s no way he’s teaching himself how to use Twitter.” They said, “No, he’s sitting there and he’s using it.”
Roger Stone: On New Year’s Day 2013, I called Donald, as I have on every New Year’s Day for 40 years, 39 years at that point, to wish him happy New Year. And we were just bullshitting, talking politics, and he said, “I’m definitely running in 2016.” I said, “Run this time. Romney was a terrible candidate. The guy has no instinct for the jugular.” He said, “Well, a lot can happen between now and 2016, but I’m really going to do it this time. In fact,” he said, “I’ve trademarked my campaign slogan.” And I said, “Really? What is it?” And he said, “Make America Great Again.” Now, whether or not he knew that Reagan had used that as one of several slogans—Reagan’s slogan in 1980 kept changing. Reagan had used it, but he had used “The Time Is Now” too.
Justin McConney: On [February 5, 2013], a tweet went out at night.* Unless he had called me there wouldn’t be a reason for a tweet to go out at night. The next morning I check with Meredith [McIver] and a few other people who had the password, and they said, “We didn’t put this out.” I checked with Trump and he said, “Oh yeah. I did it.” I was like, “Oh God.” I felt like Dr. Grant in Jurassic Park when he learned the velociraptors can open doors. “This isn’t going to be good.”
The Republican National Committee put together a 97-page campaign autopsy in early 2013 called the Growth and Opportunity Project. It made scores of recommendations to expand the party beyond its conservative base by passing immigration reform, reaching out to gays and people of color, and looking to Republican governors in Democratic states for leadership.
Sean Spicer: The bottom line is any party wants to figure how to grow as opposed to shrink. One of the issues was the party wasn’t going to neighborhoods where there was potential growth. You’ve got to bring conservative values and ideas to communities where we don’t traditionally go. The recommendation of the Growth and Opportunity Project said we need to address immigration as an issue. A lot of immigration hardliners took that as saying there was no policy prescription at the time. It said, “This is a barrier to entry in this community.” A lot of people tried to say the party was advocating a particular policy prescription. It was very clear that it was not.
Erick Erickson: The Republican National Committee put out its audit in 2013, and they’re headed in the trajectory of, “All of you people who hate immigration reform, you’re to blame.” There was at the base level real lingering resentment of that. Trump is beginning to tap into that. He taps into the birther stuff with the birth certificate. The Breitbart guys and others started shaping his thinking on immigration, which really wasn’t hard to do.
Steve Bannon: RNC does the autopsy. How did we lose? I see in RealClearPolitics a four-part series by a guy named Sean Trende, who’s a lawyer in Richmond, that’s the most sophisticated analysis of the data. He goes through how the working class didn’t show up. That’s the key difference.22
Glenn Beck, political commentator, author, and founder of TheBlaze: I was down in Florida, and he called me out of the blue and said, “Hey, I understand you’re going to be playing at such and such theater, why don’t you come down to Mar-a-Lago and stay the night?” I said, “Wow that’s really gracious of you, thank you.” My wife and I got there late, and there’s this really creepy painting in a big old paneled room, very dark, gothic, this giant painting of him in white tennis shorts and a sweater tied around his neck and a tennis racket. And you’re like, “Oh, dear God, man,” and he looked like he was 20. I mean, who has that painted? Well, Donald Trump does. The next morning we’re getting ready to leave, and one of the people came and said, “Donald would like to say hi,” and I said, “Oh, is he here?” And they said, “Yes, just go to your suite.” He called me on the phone and said, “You know, you have quite a following.” And I said, “Uh-huh,” and he said, “You could really help unite the Republicans and the right around a candidate.” Not thinking that this guy’s thinking about running for president, I said, “Well, I don’t know, it would depend on who the candidate is.” And he said, “It was great to have you here.” He was like in the next room! I don’t know why we were communicating like Howard Hughes.
Steve Bannon: The autopsy says, “Here’s why we lost. We didn’t hug the Hispanic vote. You’re anti-amnesty. The millennial Hispanics didn’t turn out. Yada, yada, yada.”
I call up Jeff Sessions and his young charge from the Bachmann campaign, one Stephen Miller, and have them over to the Breitbart Embassy. It’s a five-hour dinner and I’m there to convince Jeff Sessions to run for president of the United States. I tell him, “You’re not going to win the Republican nomination, but we’ve got two issues: trade, which is number 100, and immigration, which is number three. We’re going to make them number one and two following Sean Trende’s model. We’re going to take over the Republican Party, and you are going to be our instrument to do that.”
Trade and illegal immigration, they’re two sides of the same coin. It’s suppression of labor. But the donors are all into suppressing labor. I said, “This is going to be a war. But now we’ve got to go to war because if we go down the Romney path, this thing’s going to be smaller and smaller. They’re going to win the House, the Senate, Supreme Court, the whole deal. The whole thing’s over and everything we won in 2010 is going to be thrown away.” Sessions says, “This is brilliant. We’re going to do this. But I’m not the guy. But our guy will come along.”