Donald Trump is notorious for inventing his own "facts" to support his arguments - such as the record-breaking crowds of invisible people at his inauguration, or the thousands of dead centenarians who
begged him to bring back their sons' remains from North Korea. It appears that his supporters share this tendency towards fiction - last night's TVB news contained a vox pop snippet from a lady called Tina Whittington, who asserted that: "The majority of Americans voted Trump in on his promise that he would elect [sic] and nominate a pro-life Supreme Court justice, and that's what he's done tonight."
On the face of it (leaving aside the irony - surely deserving of an in-depth psychological study - that Americans who identify themselves as "pro-life" are more likely to support capital punishment and oppose gun control) this is a plausible democratic argument. The only problem is that the majority of Americans didn't vote Trump in - they voted for Hillary Clinton. While the archaic quirks of the American political system put Trump in the White House, in reality he has no popular mandate for anything.
1 comment:
But to be fair, the quote says "The majority..." not "A majority...".
The latter would falsely imply that most Americans voted him in, but the former can be understood to mean "Of those who voted him in, most did so on the basis of X".
Am just being picky though - I agree with your main point!
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