Whatever else you might say about him, Donald Trump is one of the great branders of our age. And what he’s accomplished over the nine months since he took that now-notorious ride down the Trump Tower escalator is plainly his life’s masterwork: his rebranding of the GOP in his own image.
The Trump Organization is a global trademarking factory; among the 515 corporations, trusts, limited liability companies and other entities listed on Trump’s Federal Election Commission disclosure are scores of buildings, golf courses, products and other things from Baku to Dubai listed as “Trump Marks” (as in trademarks) entities. For example: Trump Ice LLC; Trump Marks Mattress LLC; Trump Pageants, Inc. And my favorite: The Trump Follies LLC.
After Tuesday’s primaries, it’s looking like we can add one more entity to the Trump Marks list: the Trumpublican Party, LLC.
Trump accomplished this rebranding so fast that Republicans still don’t seem to understand what happened to them. We’ve heard him say it many times in recent months—he’s defined the race, whether the issue is immigration or trade or corporate tax inversions, which even Hillary Clinton has taken up as a cause. Trump’s favorite locution: “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even be talking about [fill in the blank].” Or as his daughter Ivanka put it recently to Breitbart: “From Day One, my father set the agenda for what the whole party is talking about.”
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