The MAGA movement is the political movement that formed around Donald Trump’s presidential candidacies and the “Make America Great Again” slogan. Trump announced his candidacy at Trump Tower in New York on June 16, 2015; the movement is dated here from that campaign.
The slogan is older than the movement
Two documents establish this, and both are primary.
The phrase appears in the 1980 Republican Party platform, adopted July 15, 1980, whose preamble reads: “With God’s help, let us now, together, make America great again; let us now, together, make a new beginning.” It was in political use thirty-five years before the campaign that made it a movement name.
As a trademark, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on November 19, 2012 — after the 2012 election and before the 2016 campaign — and registered on July 14, 2015 as registration number 4773272, a month after the candidacy announcement.
What this page does not claim
Much of what is written about this movement concerns its composition, its beliefs and its relationship to the Republican Party. Those are contested and are not settled by any source cited here, so this page does not adjudicate them. An earlier version of this page asserted a four-phase history — “Digital Formation”, “Mainstream Integration”, “Platform Challenges”, “Platform Diversification” — with dates attached to each. None of it was sourced, and the periodization was invented; it has been removed rather than annotated.
Sources
- 01.
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Trademark registration 4773272, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN (serial 85783371). Source for the filing date of November 19, 2012, the registration date of July 14, 2015, and the registration number. The owner of record shown in the current status view is CIC Operations LLC; this page does not assert who the original applicant was, because that was not checked against the assignment record.
- 02.
The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. Republican Party Platform of 1980. (1980). Adopted July 15, 1980. Source for the phrase predating its 2010s use: the platform's preamble reads "With God's help, let us now, together, make America great again; let us now, together, make a new beginning."
- 03.
The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. Remarks Announcing Candidacy for President in New York City. (2015). Donald Trump's June 16, 2015 announcement at Trump Tower. Source for the date the campaign the movement formed around began, and for the slogan's use in it.