Trump has claimed his victory was a mandate. Washington's realities are already challenging that

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

86% : "Ron is doing a good job," Donald Trump said.
73% : "The beauty is that we won by so much," Trump told Time Magazine in a recent interview.
65% : "I will eat sh*t sandwiches -- which is budget bills and debt ceiling increases -- so that Trump has a great runway," Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw said Friday, "but you've got to plan ahead to do that."Just before the House voted Friday night, Trump lamented to one GOP lawmaker in a call that the spending deal couldn't include a hike in the debt ceiling, an issue that he knows now he will have to confront in his presidency.
59% : "If you think the last 48 hours have been unique," former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said Friday on his podcast, "every day coming in when President Trump takes over is going to be like this.
57% : While Trump didn't formally endorse in the race, Scott was publicly backed by many of the president-elect's top allies, including Charlie Kirk, the founder of the pro-Trump group Turning Point USA, and billionaire Musk.
52% : Despite these setbacks, Trump has managed to assert himself as the predominant figure in his party ahead of his return to Washington.
49% : Trump has asserted his decisive November victory should clear any roadblocks standing in the way of his agenda.
48% : Trump has claimed his victory was a mandate.
40% : Though he is the first Republican in a generation to win the popular vote, Trump ended up with less than 50% of the country behind him and his Electoral College margin was sizable but hardly historic.
37% : Lawmakers on Friday finally convinced Trump he couldn't achieve his goal without a costly shutdown.
36% : Washington's realities are already challenging thatSteve Contorno, CNNDecember 22, 2024 at 12:54 AMDonald Trump has yet to arrive in Washington, but he is already confronting the limitations of his electoral mandate.
35% : "Yet, Trump in the last month has already faced several high-profile defeats at the hands of his own party before even taking office.
35% : DeSantis relayed back to Trump a delicate message: He had nothing against Lara Trump, but he felt the optics of appointing her to such a high-profile post were problematic and he was looking elsewhere to fill the seat.
33% : The chaotic episode one month before Trump returns to the White House served as a reminder that governing has foiled plenty of successful politicians, and it foreshadowed the challenges ahead for Trump as he navigates a narrow House majority and a Senate full of people who expect to outlast the president-elect's four years in Washington.
29% : Still, there are clearly frustrations building among Republicans that Trump has expended so much of his political capital (and their time) on quixotic causes before he is sworn in to office.
26% : By early Saturday morning -- 48 hours after Trump threatened primary challenges for anyone who supported funding the government without eliminating the debt limit -- 170 House Republicans and dozens of GOP senators voted for just that.
25% : Trump has stood by former Fox anchor Pete Hegseth, his pick for secretary of defense, amid a cascade of damaging revelations, including a sexual assault allegation; concerns about his tenure leading a veterans charity; questions about past alcoholic consumption habits; and an unearthed email from his mother calling him "an abuser of women.
23% : Some publicly grumbled that Trump and Musk had not actually won any spending cuts in the smaller bill House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed through Friday with the help of Democratic votes.
22% : While the Gaetz nomination faltered, Trump has marched ahead with a series of unconventional Cabinet picks that continue to test Republican senators.
22% : The source familiar with the call told CNN that Trump seemed frustrated yet resigned as reality began setting in that despite his massive influence over the GOP, there are some issues that some conservatives will not bend on for him.
21% : Trump had long considered his pick to lead the Justice Department the most critical post in his Cabinet and now has settled for a fallback, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.