Welcome back. We are we're so glad you could
join us for another deep dive today. Absolutely.
Thanks for being here. So today we are looking
at something that whether you actively follow
politics or you just casually scroll through
social media, you absolutely encounter. Oh, without
a doubt. We're talking about the history, the
hidden mechanics and the massive global impact
of the political slogan, Make America Great Again,
or as it's universally known, MGA. Right. And.
To guide this exploration, we're pulling from
a heavily cited Wikipedia article that tracks
the slogan's entire life cycle. It covers the
historical origins, the fierce controversies,
and all the, uh... the endless cultural permutations
that spawned right up through early 2026. And
our mission for you today is to dissect exactly
how four very simple words evolved from a fairly
standard political catchphrase into a multi -billion
dollar global pop culture phenomenon. Exactly.
We want to help you understand the actual mechanics
of viral language. Like, how does a slogan become
a polarizing symbol that transcends borders?
Right. And look, we know this is a highly charged
topic. We are talking about incredibly polarizing...
politics from both the left and the right. But
for the next 15 minutes or so, we aren't taking
sides. I want to be super clear about that. We
are stepping back to act purely as historians
and sociologists. Yeah, we are completely impartial
here. We're just looking at the mechanics of
this phenomenon and reporting the varying perspectives
exactly as the data presents them. Because we're
looking at this through the lens of history and
language. The goal is understanding how a phrase
takes on a life of its own, not arguing for one
side of the aisle or the other. Right. Exactly.
OK, let's unpack this. Let's start with a trivia
question for you. If I asked you to guess who
first used the phrase make America great again
in a presidential campaign. Your instinct is
probably Donald Trump in 2016. Right. But the
phrase actually has a much older political pedigree.
It does. To find the origin, you have to rewind
the clock back to the 1980 presidential campaign.
Ronald Reagan famously used the phrase, let's
make America great again, to rally voters during
his run. Because at the time, the U .S. was choked
by stagflation. Yes, and Reagan used that intense
economic distress as a springboard. During his
acceptance speech at the 1980 Republican National
Convention, he literally spoke to the people
who had abandoned hope, promising to restore
that hope and welcome them into a great national
crusade. he deployed those specific words to
stir a renewed sense of patriotism among a highly
anxious electorate exactly But then fast forward
to 1992 and the phrase pops up across the aisle.
Bill Clinton used it in speeches during his 1992
presidential campaign. He did. He even pushed
the phrase in a radio commercial that aired for
his wife, Hillary Clinton, during her 2008 presidential
primary run. Right. And what's fascinating here
is... What's fascinating here is how the meaning
of identical words shifts entirely depending
on the era, the political climate, and the speaker.
Yeah, because later during the 2016 campaign
when Hillary Clinton was running against Donald
Trump, Bill Clinton actually... criticized Trump's
use of the slogan. Right. He suggested that Trump's
version of Make America Great Again was essentially
a coded message to white Southerners promising
to move them back up the social totem pole at
the expense of others. Which is wild because
he made that critique despite having utilized
the exact same phrasing herself decades earlier
to project economic optimism. Right. I'm curious
about the timeline then. If Reagan used it in
1980 and Clinton in 92, how did Trump manage
to completely co -opt it so effectively? Did
he just start printing it on posters one day?
Well, he was actually testing the waters much
earlier than most people realize. Trump published
a book in 2011 with the subtitle Making America
Number One Again. Oh, I didn't realize it was
that early. Yeah. And then he changed it in a
2015 reissue to make America great again. So
he was experimenting with the framing long before
he came down the golden escalator. Right. And
by his own account, Trump first considered the
slogan, we will make America great. But he ended
up scrapping it because he felt it implied that
America was never great to begin with. He wanted
to capture a sense of restoration. a return to
a specific pinnacle. So he settled on Make America
Great Again and formally began using it on November
7, 2012. Which is literally the day after Barack
Obama won his reelection against Mitt Romney.
Exactly. Trump later claimed he was unaware of
Reagan's 1980 use until 2015, but he famously
noted that Reagan didn't bother to trademark
it. Right, because Trump's background as a businessman
caused him to approach a political cash phrase
like a piece of intellectual property. A few
days after Obama's 2012 reelection, Trump signed
an application with the U .S. Patent and Trademark
Office to get exclusive rights to use the slogan
for political purposes. And he got it registered
as a service mark in 2015 once his campaign officially
kicked off. But he had a pretty hilarious blind
spot when he did that, though. Oh, right. The
Bobby Bones thing. Yes. He trademarked it for
political action, but he didn't trademark the
phrase in commerce. That massive oversight opened
the door for a radio personality named Bobby
Bones. In August 2015, Bones realized the commerce
trademark was still completely available. Which
is just incredible. So he successfully filed
a trademark for the phrase's use in commerce,
essentially locking the Trump campaign out of
selling their own merchandise legally. And then
Bones immediately tweeted at Trump, offering
to give the slogan back, but only in exchange
for a $100 ,000 donation to St. Jude Children's
Research Hospital. It was a brilliant negotiation
tactic playing out in public. Truly. By October
of that year, Bones tweeted an image of a check
from the Trump Organization. The exact amount
was undisclosed, but Bones announced that Trump
could have his slogan back. The Trump campaign
essentially had to ransom their own catchphrase
to start selling merchandise. But once that commerce
trademark was secured, the campaign unleashed
what is arguably the most recognizable piece
of political merchandise in modern history, the
red May G .A. hat. Right, the hat. The strategic
genius of that $25 hat is staggering when you
look at the economics of a modern political campaign.
During the 2016 run, Trump's team actually spent
more money on manufacturing those hats than they
spent on polling, political consultants, or even
television commercials. That's just wild to think
about. The return on investment was astronomical.
Trump himself estimated that counterfeit versions
outnumbered the real ones 10 to 1. But the origin
of the hat didn't matter. Because every single
time somebody put one on their head, it was a
free walking advertisement. Exactly. It also
acted as a powerful piece of uniform apparel.
Wearing it created an immediate visual marker
of an in -group. You could walk down the street
and instantly identify a political ally without
saying a word. Because uniforms create cohesion.
The white -on -red design became an incredibly
successful symbol of unity for his base, transforming
a political preference into a highly visible
physical identity. Here's where it gets really
interesting, especially if you look at the data
side of things. Donald Trump took this physical
identity and seamlessly weaponized the slogan
on social media, primarily Twitter. Yeah. In
the first half of 2017 alone, he posted the slogan
33 times. A Bloomberg News analysis looked at
the raw numbers and found that simply adding
the phrase or the hashtag MGA to a tweet added
roughly 51 ,000 to the post's retweet and favorite
count. That's a massive bump. Right. For context,
his average tweet attracted about 107 ,000 interactions,
meaning the slogan alone was driving nearly a
50 percent boost in engagement. And when critics
told him his aggressive use of the slogan on
social media wasn't presidential, he tweeted
back that it was, quote, modern day presidential.
He fundamentally understood the viral nature
of the phrase and how algorithms reward simple,
repetitive, highly charged messaging. But a symbol
with that much cultural gravity rarely unites
everyone. The sheer visibility of the phrase,
and specifically the red hat, created a massive
cultural fracture. It really did. For millions
of Americans, the slogan became deeply polarizing.
To understand the full scope of this phenomenon,
we have to look at the two distinct opposing
viewpoints presented in the data. Starting with
the critical view. Scholars like Sarah Churchwell
and journalists like Marissa Melton argue that
the phrase acts as a dog whistle. They describe
it as romanticizing a past where certain groups,
primarily white men, held unquestioned supremacy
while systemically excluding others. They argue
the nostalgia the phrase invokes is highly selective.
Yes. The actor Bryan Cranston voiced this perspective
very directly during an interview. He asked the
public to consider when America was ever great
for African -Americans. Right. His argument was
that taking the country back to an earlier time
inherently means returning to an era of overt
exclusion and fewer civil rights for minorities.
And this perspective is bolstered by data from
a 2018 study. Researchers used text mining and
semantic network analytics on Twitter and found
that the ManGA hashtag was heavily utilized by
white supremacist users, acting as a digital
organizing space for far -right extremists globally.
Which is why, because of these specific associations
and the way the hat was adopted by certain fringe
groups, some prominent critics have gone so far
as to compare wearing the ManGA hat to flying
the Confederate flag. On the other hand, proponents
of the slogan flatly and vehemently reject that
characterization. To the millions of people who
bought the hats and voted for the campaign, the
slogan is an expression of pure patriotism, American
exceptionalism and optimism about the country's
economic future. They see it as a unifying call
to restore American strength, completely devoid
of any racial animus. To them, the greatness
refers to manufacturing dominance, strong borders
and a booming middle class. not social regression.
And the defense of the hat as a legitimate, non
-hateful expression of political belief even
made its way to the federal courts. It did. In
late 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
ruled that wearing a MAGA hat is considered protected
speech under the First Amendment. This was after
a former teacher war went to school and faced
verbal harassment and retaliation from school
employees. Right. The court affirmed that wearing
the hat is a protected exercise of political
belief shielded from government retaliation.
So it's legally protected political speech. Yes.
This raises an important question for you to
consider. How can a single piece of cotton and
thread, a mass -produced red baseball cap, simultaneously
mean pure optimism and patriotism to one person
and overt exclusion and racism to another? It
perfectly illustrates the immense power of subjective
interpretation. Exactly. The hat itself has no
inherent power. It only holds the meaning that
the viewer projects onto it. And because it became
such a massive cultural lightning rod the slogan
inevitably morphed. It took on a life of its
own, spawning endless iterations, parodies and
adaptations. Even Trump himself played with the
formula over the years as circumstances changed.
Right. In 2020, as the incumbent, his campaign
pushed to keep America great. And when he teamed
up with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in late 2024, they
merged brands to promise to make America healthy
again. He even floated the phrase make America
great and glorious again, which gave us the rather
clunky acronym MAGAGA. MAGAGA. Yeah. The Internet
heavily. mock that one. But his political rivals
quickly recognized the power of the grammatical
format, too. They sure did. During the 2020 Democratic
primaries, Andrew Yang used the slogan, Make
America Think Harder, which cleverly spelled
out M. And when Ron DeSantis ran in the 2024
Republican primary, his pitch was make America
Florida, attempting to nationalize his state
level policies. Even on the left, the term Blue
Magie emerged. Progressive commentators used
it to criticize what they perceived as a blind,
cult -like devotion to Joe Biden among establishment
Democrats. They were accusing them of mirroring
the unquestioning loyalty of Trump's base. But
the pop culture footprint is where you see how
truly inescapable those four words became. Comedian
John Oliver did a massive segment on HBO urging
viewers to make Donald Drumpf Thoth. Again, referencing
the Trump family's ancestral name. That single
segment broke HBO records, pulling in 85 million
views. Wow. The structure of the phrase just
became a universal mad lib for writers and marketers.
Corporate brands co -opted the controversy for
engagement. Oh, yeah. The 90s nostalgia snack
Dunkaroos launched a Make America Dunk Again
campaign. The B -movie franchise Sharknado used
the tagline Make America Bait again for its fifth
installment. In television, the Amazon series
The Boys had its villain, Homelander, push the
slogan Make America Super Again as he launched
a violent insurrection. Even the video game industry
got involved. Wolfenstein II, a game about fighting
an alternate history Nazi regime, used the tagline
Make America Nazi Free. again in its marketing,
which sparked its own separate internet controversy.
And Snoop Dogg released an EP titled Make America
Crip Again. You really couldn't get away from
it. Whether you were eating grocery store snacks,
watching premium cable, playing a first -person
shooter game, or listening to hip -hop, You could
not escape the shadow of that slogan. It achieved
total cultural saturation in the United States.
And as we look at the timeline moving through
2025 and early 2026, the MadGA template successfully
exported itself. It went completely global. It
really became the ultimate go -to branding for
global populism and nationalism. Right. During
Argentina's 2023 presidential election, Javier
Magle used Make Argentina Great Again. After
Magle won, Trump publicly congratulated him,
specifically calling him a May -GA person. In
February 2025, Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi actually pitched a localized derivative
to Trump during a bilateral meeting. Modi called
it MIGA, Make India Great Again. He told the
press that when May -GA and MIGA work together.
It creates a mega partnership. Which is pretty
clever. But those are the friendly diplomatic
adaptations. The slogan also became the flashpoint
for incredibly heated international conflicts.
Like the 2025 Brazil cap war. Yes, the cap war.
After Trump hiked tariffs on Brazil, which some
financial outlets described as the greatest economic
interference since the Cold War, the Brazilian
government didn't just fight back with policy.
They fought back with a deliberate wardrobe change.
President Lula da Silva and all 38 of his government
ministers posed. for official photos wearing
bright blue caps that read, Brazil belongs to
Brazilians. It was a direct, highly orchestrated
visual counterattack to the red Manor hats, using
Trump's own visual language against him on the
world stage. And then in early 2026, the localized
resistance to the slogan reached absurd new heights
during the massive protests in Greenland. Trump
had apparently revived his long, dormant push
for the United States to purchase or annex the
territory. In response, protesters in Greenland
took to the streets wearing their own modified
hats to catch the attention. of the American
media. Their hats read, Make America Go Away.
Make America go away. You literally can't write
this stuff. It is amazing how quickly a localized
protest group knew exactly which buttons to push
to get international coverage. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, it demonstrates how
a localized American phrase became a universal
template for asserting national identity, sometimes
in incredibly bizarre contexts. Definitely. In
May 2025, the Syrian president, Ahmed al -Shara,
used the exact phrasing, stating, We must make
Syria great again during a high -profile interview.
about rebuilding his country. And Trump even
applied it to Venezuela. He did. In early 2026,
after a truly cinematic sequence of events where
the Trump administration literally captured Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, taking
them into federal custody in New York. Trump
spoke about the newly installed acting Venezuelan
president. He assured the press she was willing
to do what was necessary to make Venezuela great
again. It was genuinely dizzying to track the
journey of this phrase. It really is. We started
in a 1980 convention hall with Ronald Reagan
trying to lift the country out of stagflation.
Then the phrase is resurrected by Donald Trump
in 2012, turned into a billion dollar cultural
phenomenon via a $25 red baseball cap. Sparks
one of the fiercest debates over political speech.
inclusion, and race in modern American history.
And finally, it evolves into a global Mad Libs
template utilized by everyone from prime ministers
in India to protesters in Greenland. Incredible
journey. So what does this all mean for you?
Whether you work in marketing, whether you are
obsessed with political science, or whether you
are simply an everyday consumer of media, this
deep dive proves one undeniable fact. Words are
never just words. Right. A slogan is just a vessel.
Exactly. It carries whatever historical, emotional,
and cultural weight we choose to pour into it.
It can be a shield for some and a weapon for
others, entirely dependent on whose head the
hat is sitting on. And I want to leave you, the
listener, with a final thought to mull over.
When you look at the underlying psychology discussed
in the research, it becomes clear that the true
power of the slogan doesn't actually lie in the
words make. or America or even great. That's
a great point. The entire psychological hook
of the phrase relies entirely on the word. Because
it triggers nostalgia. Exactly. That single word
taps into a very well -documented universal human
psychology known as rosy retrospection. It is
essentially a glitch hardwired into our brains
that causes us to remember the past more fondly
than it actually was. Our memories naturally
strip away the day -to -day anxiety, the boredom,
and the struggle of historical reality, leaving
only a warm, nostalgic glow. The slogan weaponizes
that cognitive bias perfectly. So as you go about
your week, consider this. When you find yourself
longing for the good old days in your own life,
are you remembering reality as it was, or are
you just watching a highly edited highlight reel?
Thank you all so much for joining us on this
journey through the history and impact of one
of the modern era's most powerful phrases. We'll
be back soon to unpack another massive topic.
Until then, keep questioning, keep learning,
and thanks for listening to The Deep Dive.