Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about the Trump mandate that isn't.

A line that has been repeated over and over and over since the election is that Trump has a mandate.

Does he, though?

In what sense exactly? I honestly can't find out where

this idea comes from. It doesn't come from the election. Even though he won, more people

voted for somebody else than voted for him. He didn't get a majority of the vote. He won by a smaller margin than Biden did in 2020.

Would you say Biden had a mandate? So, the idea of a mandate doesn't come from the election.

There's not a single metric that suggests he won with a mandate. Maybe he's really well liked. Not according

to any favorability rating. He's underwater. More people have an unfavorable view of him than

favorable. So it's not that. Maybe it's on the policy front. Maybe people don't support him, but support his

policies. That doesn't appear to be the case either. In NPR, PBS News Merrist poll found that only 31%

of Americans believe his tariff plans will help the economy, and 48% think

it will hurt. Americans are evenly split on mass deportations. 62% of people disapprove of him

pardoning January 6th defendants. Okay, so it's not a mandate for policy.

Sometimes a mandate can be perceived by big congressional wins. Nope, some of the smallest

margins in history. Traditional politics says there's only one more possible cause for a mandate.

As the saying goes, it's the economy stupid.

But that's not it either.

There's no economic mandate.

In fact, it says that most people think their personal financial situation will get worse or stay the same

over the next year. That's it. There's no mandate. But, and this is the important part,

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