Donald Trump is upset with the media for accurately reporting that his election night victory wasn’t exactly a “landslide.”
Trump transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt on Friday took aim at Politico and The New York Times for reporting on the fact that President-elect Trump didn’t win the popular vote by some resounding majority.
“New Fake News Narrative Alert!” Leavitt posted on X. “Here are the ridiculous headlines from @politico and @nytimes this morning. The fake news is trying to minimize President Trump’s massive and historic victory to try to delegitimize his mandate before he even takes the Oath of Office again.”
It’s no surprise that Trump and his team are fuming: Since November 5, Trump’s margin of victory has narrowed considerably. As of the vote count Friday morning, Trump only won against Vice President Kamala Harris by 1.6 points, and failed to secure more than 50 percent of the popular vote. Hillary Clinton managed to beat Trump by a larger margin in 2016 than Trump did over Harris in 2024.
Trump and his supporters have been pushing the landslide narrative ever since he defeated Harris. “We had a great election in the U.S.… Amazing what happened, we had tremendous success. The most successful in over 100 years they say,” he told Fox News last week. Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung claimed that “President Trump won in dominating and historic fashion after the Democrats and the fake news media peddled outright lies and disinformation throughout the campaign.” And Republicans throughout Congress have claimed the same.
Trump likes the landslide narrative, true or not (not), because he thinks it gives him more ground to stand on for his insane agenda. But his mandate is much weaker than he’d have you believe.
