Listen to President Donald Trump and his spokespeople long enough and you'll hear them talk of the "mandate" he's been given by the American people to disrupt the federal government.
In an unprecedented speech at the Justice Department last week, Trump said the voters have “given us a mandate” for “a far-reaching investigation ... into the corruption of our system” by Democrats. Trump has also claimed that his “massive landslide victory” gave him a “historic mandate” to reshape policy "with respect to taxation, federal social spending, immigration, energy production, family values, defense and other areas."
Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson wrote in Monday's New York Times that Trump "seems to view his job differently than many voters, which is one reason for his falling poll numbers.He strongly believes that he was elected to return to Washington as a disrupter, this time with significantly more experience and effectiveness than in his first term...he believes he has the latitude to go big and bold, to create some turbulence and cause some prices to rise in the short term as he asserts himself in Washington and around the globe."
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But, Anderson wrote, "As I dug into Mr. Trump’s polling data, it looked increasinglythat American voters’ mandate to the president was more narrow than he sees it."
At the top of the list: "There is increasing evidence in public opinion data that Americans are growing impatient to get the primary thing they feel they were promised: a more stable economy where the cost of living is more affordable," Anderson wrote.
"Presidents have misread their mandates in the past, seeing what they want to see rather than what the voters have plainly told them," Anderson wrote. "The best argument for Mr. Trump’s belief that he was elected with a broad mandate to bring about aggressive change is that he never pretended he’d do otherwise."
In other words, "Voters had plenty of foreknowledge of what Mr. Trump might do in a second term, and they voted for him anyway."