President-elect Donald Trump has often marked national holidays by attacking his political rivals and airing his grievances against them on social media. This Thanksgiving, on the cusp of his return to the White House, Trump again criticized Democrats, accusing them of trying to “destroy” the country while touting his “landslide victory.”
“Happy Thanksgiving to all, including to the Radical Left Lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our Country, but who have miserably failed, and will always fail, because their ideas and policies are so hopelessly bad that the great people of our Nation just gave a landslide victory to those who want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Thursday. “Don’t worry, our Country will soon be respected, productive, fair, and strong, and you will be, more than ever before, proud to be an American!”
Vice President-elect JD Vance followed suit, posting a bizarre image on X of him and Trump serving the 2024 electoral map at a dinner table. Vance’s post, which has Trump’s head pasted on the body of the patriarch and Vance’s on the body of the housewife in Norman Rockwell’s painting “Freedom From Want,” was widely mocked on social media.
Trump has claimed that his victory in the 2024 election was “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” And while it is true that unlike in 2016 and 2020, Trump won the popular vote this election, he did so by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century, as The New York Times noted. Still, he has brandished his claim of a “mandate” as a justification to make controversial choices for his Cabinet, testing Senate Republicans’ appetite for challenging their party leader.