And right on cue, it begins: House Speaker Paul Ryan claims a “mandate” for Trump’s mix of bigotry and nationalist rage.
House Speaker Paul Ryan called for unity following the election of Donald Trump Wednesday morning, saying the Republican nominee “just earned a mandate.”
Donald Trump, it should be pointed out, won the election but lost the popular vote. President Barack Obama dominated the popular vote in both elections, handily crushing his two opponents.
But at no point during his tenure did so much as one Republican leader consider Obama to have a “mandate”; instead, they obstructed him at every turn, from the first year to the last, escalating finally into an anti-constitutional move to deny him a Supreme Court nominee for the last year of his term. Because they wanted to.
But Trump, Paul Ryan says, now has a “mandate.”