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It's no secret that the country is closely divided politically. President Trump won a sweeping Electoral College victory in 2024, but he only narrowly won the popular vote. Despite that, he continues to claim a broad mandate. NPR's Domenico Montanaro looks at what Trump has done and how that's squaring with what voters said they wanted.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: President Trump has moved at breakneck speed to try and remake the federal government, deport migrants and urge investigations of political enemies. His justification for it all?
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The American people have given us a mandate, a mandate like few people thought possible.
We won in a big mandate. We won every swing state. We won by millions of votes.
MONTANARO: A mandate. He's used the word in speeches, interviews or social media at least 50 times since being elected to assert that he has the backing of the public for his agenda, and he's done it at unusual times for a president. What you just heard, for example, was Trump in a speech at the Justice Department wanting prosecutors to investigate his political enemies and during a meeting with the prime minister of Ireland. He even talked about it during his tense Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, noting how lucky Ukraine is that Trump won so he could try to end the war.
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TRUMP: Was a mandate. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote by millions and millions of votes. We won everything.
MONTANARO: Lots of presidents have claimed a mandate, and often, they've done so from a defensive posture when they've narrowly won, as Trump did. Sure, he won the swing states and the popular vote, but it was the closest popular vote margin in six decades in this country. That hardly amounts to an endorsement for a bold, sweeping and divisive agenda.
KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON: I think the question is whether Donald Trump's mandate is about a stylistic approach that he has always taken and that voters have known well about for many, many years, that approach of being disruptive, chaotic and if, in fact, that's what they voted for him to do.
MONTANARO: That's Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster. If Trump was given a mandate for anything, it was to bring prices down. Trump promised he'd bring costs down on Day 1, and it was a big reason many crossed over to vote for him. But with Trump's tariffs threatening to send prices even higher, trust in Trump being good for the economy is beginning to wane.
SOLTIS ANDERSON: And now voters are saying, OK, you've been elected. We know you're going to be disruptive. We know you're going to be that wrecking ball. But where's the reduced cost of living I was looking for?
MONTANARO: Soltis Anderson says Trump's overall approval ratings have been higher than during his first term, and many voters say they like what he's doing on immigration, but his economic numbers have slipped.
SOLTIS ANDERSON: People have been calling this the you break it, you bought it kind of approach, that if all of a sudden he begins making really bold moves on the economy, he also begins to run out of the ability to blame people's economic frustrations on his predecessor.
MONTANARO: Trump argues his economic policies will bring back manufacturing in the long run, even if it means higher prices now. But if those prices start to stick to Trump - who's barred from running for president again - that could be bad news for the Republican Party.
SOLTIS ANDERSON: In addition to asking voters to take on short-term economic pain in exchange for long-term gain, there's also the ask of his own party to take on short-term political pain in the promise of longer-term benefit.
MONTANARO: That's a gamble right now that Trump seems willing to take, and he's using the idea of a mandate to justify it.
Domenico Montanaro, NPR News, Washington.
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