Did Ronald Reagan use the phrase Make America Great Again in his campaigns?

1. Reagan’s 1980 claim to the phrase: what the record shows

Contemporaneous and later documentation ties the wording “Let’s make America great again” to Reagan’s 1980 campaign: his 1980 Republican National Convention acceptance speech and earlier Labor Day remarks included a call to “make America great again,” and campaign buttons and posters from that year used the phrase ^{[1] [4] [2]}. Scholarly and historical summaries explicitly say Reagan “popularized” the variant “Let’s Make America Great Again” during that campaign ^{[3] [5]}.

2. How later accounts place Reagan in the slogan’s lineage

Encyclopedias, think tanks and long-form pieces trace the slogan’s modern pedigree to Reagan in 1980 and note later reuses by other politicians, including Bill Clinton in 1992 and Donald Trump beginning in 2012–2016 ^{[1] [3] [4]}. These sources emphasize that Reagan’s version was a slightly different phrasing (“Let’s…”), but treat it as the earliest widely recognized modern use ^{[1] [3]}.

3. Visual and archival evidence: buttons and posters

The Smithsonian catalogues and news reporting point to physical campaign materials—buttons and posters—for Reagan and running mate George H.W. Bush carrying the phrase in 1980, establishing not just a spoken line but a marketed slogan that year ^{[2] [4]}. This concrete evidence is often cited to support the claim that Reagan popularized the expression in that campaign ^[2].

4. Competing claims and later trademarking

While Reagan’s 1980 use is widely cited, modern headlines and legal filings focus on Donald Trump’s later trademark and prominent use in 2016; Britannica and other overviews state Reagan popularized the phrase while noting Trump “coined” his version in 2012 and then sought trademark protection for political use in 2015 ^{[3] [1]}. Some pieces frame Trump’s claim to originality as inaccurate, noting he said he invented it only after Reagan and others had used similar wording ^{[6] [3]}.

5. Context: why the phrase recurs in U.S. politics

Analysts place the slogan in a broader rhetorical tradition of candidates promising restoration or revival—phrases like “make America great” echo earlier appeals to “restore” America by prior candidates and presidents. Commentaries argue that Reagan’s economic and political context—stagflation and voter malaise in 1980—made the line resonate and helped embed it in modern political vocabulary ^{[1] [7]}.

6. Nuance and limits in the reporting

The sources consistently report Reagan’s 1980 usage but sometimes differ in emphasis: some call Reagan the originator of the modern slogan’s popularity ^{[3] [5]}, while others note later reuses by Clinton and Trump and emphasize that Trump formalized the phrase as a trademark decades later ^{[1] [6]}. Available sources do not mention any definitive earlier, singular author of the exact phrase prior to Reagan beyond noting similar restoration themes in older campaigns ^{[8] [3]}.

7. Why this matters now: political framing and provenance

Understanding Reagan’s use matters because slogans shape political identity and ownership claims. Journalistic and academic accounts use the 1980 Reagan campaign to contest assertions that the phrase was first minted by later figures—while also noting modern actors (notably Trump) transformed it into a contemporary brand through repeated use and trademark filings ^{[1] [3] [6]}.

8. Bottom line for the question asked

Yes: the record in the provided sources shows Ronald Reagan used a variant—“Let’s make America great again”—as a campaign line and on campaign materials in 1980, and multiple reputable summaries treat that usage as the popular origin of the modern slogan ^{[2] [1] [3]}. Sources also document subsequent prominent uses, especially Trump’s rebranding and trademarking of the shorter form “Make America Great Again” decades later ^{[1] [6]}.