Do you really believe that the majority of Americans — or even the majority of Trump voters — are applauding the use of Nazi symbols? That is completely divorced from reality. The only people openly supporting Nazism are the extreme fringe right which is fortunately still nowhere near the majority in the real world.
Ask some trump voters about what they think of it, and you'll get your answer. I have, and I don't like the answers. They are too busy on cloud nine, cheering how their king is back and is signing hundreds of executive orders and getting rid of the deep state.
They simply don't care about the details. And the ones that do think it's hilarious that he's owning the libs.
I think you are wrong about the overwhelming mandate unless you are solely using the electoral college total as the yardstick. The popular vote is much closer.
- carried the Republicans to maintain a majority in the House
- helped increased the margin of seats in the Senate to a majority
Many members of the Republican party had been against Trump. This election, most were pro-Trump. His popularity helped pull both houses.
And did this after the opposition tried every tactics possible to ruin him - a fake Russian dossier that was peddled unquestioningly by the media, a misdemeanor crime gets prosecuted as a felony in the hopes to bankrupt or disqualify him from running again.
Against those odds? That showing is remarkable. Oh and he was almost assassinated, twice.
Then add on top he increased Republican share in solid Blue states like NY and CA by double digits. He increased Republican votes with black and hispanic voters.
He basically increased every single voting group across the board.
In light of the challenges, the outcome is a clear showing that a significant percentage of the US voters support him and the people in his party that are aligned to him.
I'm not sure what else you'd need to show a clear mandate.
I never saw anything but a favorable GOP outcome in the Senate in 2024 predictions and no one thought that was possible except the Democrats running in red states sending out fundraising emails, I never saw any analysis saying the 2024 Senate election was favorable to the Democrats in the run up to 2024. Show me anything that was printed prior to the election in 2024 that is not from one of the 2024 Democratic campaigns. That just one of your points where you state that as a clear mandate.
The assassination stuff is just not germane to a discussion about mandate nor your purported fake Russian dossier.
Trump won with 49% of the popular vote vs Harris' 48%, with one of the smallest margins of victory ever - just 0.15% of eligible voters. He won just a handful more electoral votes than Biden in 2020, and far fewer than Obama or Reagan.
That is not an overwhelming mandate, nor does it represent a majority of the country.
But then Trumpists never let the truth get in the way of their own mythmaking. They said they had an overwhelming mandate and the support of most Americans even in 2016 when literally millions more people voted for Hillary Clinton. Hell, they didn't even think they actually lost in 2020. I'm surprised they can square the cognitive dissonance of Trump being elected to a third term.
> Trump won with 49% of the popular vote vs Harris' 48%, with one of the smallest margins of victory ever
Irrelevant, we don't elect presidents by popular vote.
> That is not an overwhelming mandate, nor does it represent a majority of the country.
He won the Senate as well. Increased the majority in the House. Increased his votes in NY, CA. And among blacks and hispanic voters.
All while almost being assassinated (twice!) and having the mass media peddling lies against him for the last 8 years (Russiagate!). He wasn't like Obama who had the media backing him.
It absolutely is a mandate. It's a clear mandate because his Party has both houses and the Presidency!
> Irrelevant, we don't elect presidents by popular vote.
How the details of the election process actually works is tangential to what kind of mandate they have.
If some bizarre election mechanism that a country followed meant that a party getting 1 vote more than the opposition gave it 100% of the power, that's how elections in that country would work, but that doesn't mean the winners would have a strong mandate from the electorate as a whole.
In Nazi Germany, Hitler made the argument that, well, since 33% of the voters (17% of the population) voted for him, far ahead of the runner-up (who only got 20% of the vote), and his party made up the majority of the ruling coalition (196 out of 267 out of a total 620 seats), he should have all the power.
The system certainly gave him power for all those reasons, but it's farcical to say that 17% of the population voting for him was an 'overwhelming' mandate for Germany to embark on their insane politics, and it's also farcical to say that +1% of the vote is a clear mandate. It's a mandate, but a slim one.
The system was also designed with a lot of checks and balances and social norms in places, but as it turns out, if you collude with what were supposed to be adversaries and break all the soft (and hard) rules, you can get a dramatically radical agenda implemented, disproportionate in its scale to the popular support you enjoy.