
By now, you’ve undoubtedly seen the screenshots of Donald Trump’s registration of the Trademark for the phrase “Make America Great Again,” expressly for political use, from November 2012. If you haven’t, or if maybe you think screenshots aren’t “proof” of anything, go ahead an make one yourself. You can start by clicking here to get to the website for the US Patent and Trademark Office. Once you’re there, you just find and click on “Search trademark database” on the first page. Just a little way down the page you find a section that says “Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS)” and a button below it that says “Search Trademarks.” After that, it becomes a search that’s specific to your own browser session, so I can’t link you, but it’s pretty easy:
In the search box that’s provided, you just type in “Make America Great Again” — without quotes, of course — and hit enter:
That will take you to a full page of results of that phrase, variations of that phrase, and people making fun of the phrase… but you’re just looking for the first one, so click all the way at the bottom, on the oldest entry in the USPTO database. It belongs to Donald Trump, and it was created less than two weeks after Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama, on November 19, 2012.
There’s a fun little interactive trip you can take your right-wing family members on, when you tell them that Donald Trump is a liar. But even that isn’t enough for a lot of people to believe that Russia was involved in the election of Donald Trump as president.
That’s why this report from former NSA analyst John Schindler is so interesting to me. Of particular interest:
NSA and its partners noted a spike in Kremlin conversations about Trump and the presidency in mid-November 2013, which was when Donald Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.”
Schindler goes on to note that,
Based on SIGINT [SIGnals INTelligence] reflections back in November 2013, it appeared likely that Trump had discussions with Kremlin officials when he was visiting Moscow, in preparation for his coming run for the White House.”
That’s intelligence directly from the National Security Agency. It’s not really a surprise, then, to remember how much Russia celebrated after their efforts were successful and Trump won the electoral college, securing the presidency.
And all of this goes a long way to explain why Trump has been freaking out on Twitter, using the school shooting in Florida as a criticism of the FBI, making that entire tragedy about him, as usual. All he can think about is his inability to delete this tweet from January 2014, from one of Putin’s economic advisers:
I’m sure @realDonaldTrump will be great president! We’ll support you from Russia! America needs ambitious leader! pic.twitter.com/uIeFfPqZ1r
— Alferova Yulya (@AlferovaYulyaE) January 22, 2014
Of course, he could have done something about this one, but still hasn’t bothered:
Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow – if so, will he become my new best friend?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2013
Featured image via Opposition Report Gallery