The big news today is Trump’s OMB (Office of Management and Budget) memo to pause disbursement of federal funds effective at 5pm EST today (10 minutes from when I am typing this). I won’t go into the illegality and unconstitutionality of the memo interfering with funds appropriated by Congress. Instead I want to examine the rationale given for this and all the other sweeping changes, many like this one illegal and unconstitutional, that the Trump regime has initiated in the first few days – his mandate.
The memo
begins with “The American people elected Donald J. Trump to be President of the United
States and gave him a mandate to increase the impact of every federal taxpayer
dollar…”
Just how
strong was Trump’s “landslide” victory (as he calls it)? The counted votes were
Trump 77.3 million (49.8%), Harris 75.0 million (48.3%), a difference of 2.3
million (1.5%). This was the closest presidential race since 2000 when Al Gore
won the popular vote by 0.52% (but lost the presidency to Bush thanks to the
Supreme Court decision to stop a recount).
Of the 244 million eligible voters, 31.6% voted for Trump, 30.6% voted for Harris, and 37.8 did not vote. Both receivede less than 1/3 of the eligible votes with a difference of only 1%.
So, not a
very strong mandate on which to turn the whole government upside down.
How about
Trump’s policies – how popular are they?
Most of his
policies are favored by the majority of Republican supporters but not by
American adults as a whole. Here are some examples from a January poll (numbers
are % of favor/oppose for US adults and
for Republican supporters):
- Leaving the Paris climate treaty - A: 21/52; R: 45/22
- Ending birthright citizenship - A: 28/51; R: 53/26
- Deporting
undocumented immigrants who have not been convicted of a crime – A: 37/44;
R: 61/20
Another
poll on the pardons of convicted January 6 participants gave % opposed by Americans and by Republican
supporters (% in favor not provided):
- Pardons
for those convicted of using a deadly weapon – A: 75; R: 55
- Pardons for those convicted of assaulting police officers – A: 73; R: 54
Another January
poll looked at the popularity of Elon Musk’s role in DOGE (or whatever it’s called
now).
- 29%
of Americans and 58% of Republicans approve of the creation of DOGE
- 36% of Americans have a favorable view of Musk; 52% an unfavorable view
- About 60% of Americans think Trump getting policy advice from billionaires would be bad; 12% thought it would be good. Even with Republicans only 20% approved.
Finally, a
poll asked Americans what they thought the government isn’t spending enough
money on:
- Social
Security – 67%
- Education
– 65%
- Assistance
to the poor – 62%
- Medicare
– 61% and Medicaid - 55%
- Giving more money to billionaires [this wasn’t actually in the poll but I expect that support would be close to 1% if it was]
It appears
to me that Trump does not have a strong mandate from the American people. And for
some of his policies he doesn’t have a mandate at all, even from his own
supporters.
There are
no doubt many reasons why a majority, however slim, of Americans voted for
Trump (or didn’t vote for Harris) but it’s clear to me that giving Donald J.
Trump a strong enough mandate to break laws and ignore the Constitution in
order to carry out his policies was not one of them.
Sources
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/new-poll-republicans-oppose-jan-6-pardons/
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5105472-donald-trump-doge-support-survey/
At her first press conference, January 28, new press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to a question about her new job: “I commit to telling the truth from this podium every single day. And I will say, it’s very easy to speak truth from this podium when you have a president who is implementing policies that are wildly popular with the American people.” And she said it with a straight face - man she's good.
ReplyDeleteLooking over the poll results quoted above, it jumped out at me how much Republicans think differently from Americans.
ReplyDeleteRemember Project 2025 - the nearly 900 page document written by the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for Trump's first year in power? During the campaign when Project 2025 was leaked, Trump claimed he knew nothing about it, hoping to trick voters into supporting him. Now that he is elected he claims a strong mandate to carry out his policies, two-thirds of which closely match points in the bluleprint. Hypocrisy much?
ReplyDelete