Donald Trump Explains When Exactly America Was Great

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump's campaign slogan "make America great again" has become as ubiquitous as his personal brand (or, say, widespread violence at his rallies). But until now, Trump's remained frustratingly vague about just when the U.S. was actually winning.

Now he's finally given the public a clue of just what era he wants to take the U.S. back to. In an interview with the New York Times, the billionaire business mogul pointed to the onset of the 19th century and era during and after World War II as times when the U.S. was truly great.

"If you look back, it really was, there was a period of time when we were developing at the turn of the century which was a pretty wild time for this country and pretty wild in terms of building that machine, that machine was really based on entrepreneurship," Trump told the paper.

"And then I would say, yeah, prior to, I would say during the 1940s and the late '40s and '50s we started getting, we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war, we were pretty much doing what we had to do, yeah around that period," he added.

Perhaps by sheer coincidence (though likely not), this happens to be the era before extensive civil rights legislation was passed by Congress.

As CNN notes, Trump also did something few other Republicans might be able to get away with— criticizing the presidency of conservative icon Ronald Reagan, who he blamed in part for the "disaster" of the NAFTA trade deal.

"As much as I liked Ronald Reagan, he started NAFTA," Trump told the Times. "Now Clinton really was the one that — NAFTA has been a disaster for our country, O.K., and Clinton is the one as you know that got it done, but it was conceived even before Clinton, but you could say that maybe those people didn't want done what was ultimately signed because it was changed a lot by the time it got finalized. But NAFTA has been a disaster for our country."

Get the five stories that will challenge you to rethink the world by signing up for MicCheck Daily.