What Mandate? Trump Falls BELOW 50% Of Popular Vote

As the last outstanding votes are being counted, Donald Trump has fallen BELOW 50% of the popular vote, and his lead over Kamala Harris has fallen to less than 2%. This obviously does NOT change the outcome of the election, but it does show that the race was much closer than the electoral college would have us believe. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Ever since the election ended, we have heard from Republican, after Republican that Donald Trump, and of course by extension, the Republican Party through their gains, received a mandate for leadership here in the United States. We won the popular vote this time, you know, for the second time in 32 years, actually, longer than that, my God. But anyway, we won the popular vote for the second time in God, what would that be? 36 years, 38 years. I think it's 36. But anyway, they think it's a mandate. Well, and of course obviously they tell us that you know, Donald Trump, more than half the country voted for him. Turns out that's not true. In fact, now that you know, the last of the votes are being counted, and we have those official tallies, not even half of eligible voters voted for Donald Trump. According to Cook political report this week, there was in fact no mandate, and Donald Trump didn't even cross the 50% threshold.

Now, granted, he came close, he is at 49.9% of the popular vote, versus Harris having 48.26%. But 49.9 is not 50, it is below 50. And when you look at the fact, you add these numbers up, and we have what, 150 million people voted. So less than half the country voted, and less than half of the people who voted, voted for Donald Trump. So there is no mandate when you look at the simple math of number of people in this country. Granted, not all of them can vote, but still 333 million people, 150 million voted. And half of those people, half of the, less than half voted for Donald Trump. So we're looking at what, 23 and a half percent of people went to the vol, uh, a poll, excuse me, in early November and voted for Donald Trump, roughly 23.5%. So now for the next four years, those of us who didn't vote for Donald Trump have to live under the tyranny of the 23%, 24%. I mean, how, let's even say 25%. It doesn't matter. We're talking about a quarter of the country or less. Put this guy in power. And Republicans are marching around like they've got a mandate to do whatever the f they want for the rest of time. And unfortunately, that is how US elections work. So these numbers I'm sitting spouting here at you don't matter at all because it's winner

Take all. And unfortunately, Republicans took all but it was close. It was closer than they would like to admit. In fact, it was so close that if roughly two and a half million people hadn't sat out, we'd be talking about very different things today. Now, wouldn't we.