Donald Trump does not appear happy that people are correctly pointing out that his narrow victory over Vice President Kamala Harris does not give him a sweeping mandate to govern.
Trump's incoming White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Friday slammed articles from The New York Times and Politico highlighting that Trump did not win in a “landslide,” as he’s asserted since Nov. 5.
"New Fake News Narrative Alert! Here are the ridiculous headlines from Politico and The New York Times this morning,” Leavitt wrote on X on Friday, posting screenshots of both articles. “The fake news is trying to minimize President Trump’s massive and historic victory to try to delegitimize his mandate before he even takes the Oath of Office again."
And his campaign fired off an email statement on Friday with the subject line “The Truth About The MAGA Mandate,” which declared, “President Trump will take office with an historic mandate for his agenda—despite the unprecedented obstacles he faced every step of the way.”
“The deck was stacked against President Trump from the very beginning—and he still won big. Voters across the country trusted President Trump to deliver on his promises, and that's exactly what he'll do,” the statement said. “It's President Trump's MAGA Mandate.”
Trump has been touting his win since Election Night.
"America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate," Trump said on Nov. 6.
And he wrote in a Nov. 17 post on his Truth Social platform, “What a great week this has been. Perhaps the most successful Election results in Republican Party history! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Thank you!!!”
The whining about Trump’s mandate comes as multiple media outlets have correctly pointed out that, as vote tallies are being finalized, Trump’s win does not look like the landslide it did on election night.
Let’s look at the facts.
Trump’s share of the popular vote is now below 50%, meaning a majority of the country did not vote for him.
As of early Thursday, his popular-vote margin has dwindled to just 1.6% over Harris as states finalize their counts. That's the third-smallest margin since 1888, according to The New York Times, and is smaller than Democrat Hillary Clinton's margin in 2016 when she lost the Electoral College.
CNN election analyst Harry Enten also pointed out that Democrats won four Senate contests in states Trump carried—Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin—meaning voters in those states chose legislators as a check on Trump’s power.
"In fact, I went all the way back to the history books, and this is the most Senate races that the winner's party lost in states the president won since 2004," Enten said.
Enten added that while Republicans won the House majority, it’s the “smallest House majority since there were 50 states."
Politico’s article that Leavitt criticized pointed out:
The presidency comes with enough legal authority by itself. Why assign any small-margin winner the moral authority that comes with a popular mandate? For people in the business of reporting results and analyzing outcomes, it may feel satisfying to claim clarity after months of watching the battle. The only problem is it’s not true.
Ultimately, Trump is already feeling the squeeze of his narrow win.
Senate Republicans forced Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first choice to serve as attorney general, to withdraw his nomination by refusing to vote en masse for a man accused of child sex trafficking.
And Leavitt’s comment felt a lot like former White House press secretary Sean Spicer's embarrassing lie to the White House press corps in 2017 that Trump had "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe."
That lie sparked memes mocking Trump and his administration, and it dogged Spicer's entire tenure in Trump's White House. Spicer later said he regretted committing to such an easily disproven lie.
At the end of the day, Trump can’t handle looking like a loser. So expect the sycophants around him to keep pushing the lie about his win to stroke his very large ego.