Serial-bankrupt and bottomless pit of stupidity Donald Trump is famous for a number of things: for being a 'short-fingered vulgarian' (in Spy Magazine's coinage); for eating pizza with a knife-and-fork (because 'classy') and for wearing a windswept chinchilla on his head.
The hirsute animal on his head leads to social awkwardness. When you meet Trump, who do you greet first? The man or the chinchilla? Is it good form to pet the animal, maybe offer it a cookie? If it bares its teeth and becomes hostile, are you within your rights to beat it to death with a stick?
These and many other questions festoon the (gold-plated, natch) entrance to Trump World.
Now Don Draper and the wordsmiths of Madison Ave. need to raise their game because a new (and dare I say 'Yooj') talent has entered the field: D. Trump: phrase-maker extraordinaire.
According to thehill, in addition to going 'birther' on kazoo-voiced bucket-of-rancid-lard Ted Cruz (and boy, that is never going to get old), Trump:
...claimed he had come up with Cruz's line about making America great again and questioned whether he should have secured the rights to it ahead of the 2016 campaign.
"The line of 'Make America great again,' the phrase, that was mine, I came up with it about a year ago, and I kept using it, and everybody's now using it, they are all loving it," Trump said.
"I don’t know I guess I should copyright it, maybe I have copyrighted it."
Uh-huh...maybe you have. Then again,
Matt Taibbi thinks maybe not:
Donald Trump must never have heard of Google. Every campaign trail reporter has heard that line at least ten million times, in years prior to last year, from a depressingly large number of other politicians.
But let's just start with the obvious: Ronald Reagan made "Make America Great Again" a backbone of his campaign. He and Bush even used it on a button...it was a poster...and it was a TV ad.
And that's just the beginning. I seem to remember Rick Perry using it as well, and I'd love it if readers could dig up the full record, because it would be amusing background for Trump's copyright application.
Maybe if he straps on his Flux Capacitor and goes back in time, to the pre-Spy days when he wasn't reduced to doing reality shows or running for president to make a living, Trump can find a time when he could plausibly claim to have invented that line. But in 2015, in the world of Al Gore's Internet? Hilarious.
And as I hardly need tell you, Trump has announced that he's (maybe) in the race for 2016...because you can never have enough clowns in the Kar.
His platform? Who the hell knows? I'm going to go with: A Chicken In Every Pot, An Improbable Hairpiece On Every Head And Gold-Plated Bathroom Fixtures In Every Home.
Let's Make America Classy Again!