Analysis: Some GOP lawmakers say just do whatever Trump wants

After every election, there is plenty of valid debate about how much of a mandate the winners have just been granted by the American people to enact their agenda. The 2024 election is no exception.

But increasingly – and particularly as potential clashes between President-elect Donald Trump and elected members of his own Republican Party loom over his Cabinet picks – certain Republicans are taking that debate quite a bit further.

They are arguing not just that Trump has a huge mandate, which is itself untrue, but that his mandate is effectively the only one that counts.

It might sound simplistic to summarize that as “Trump won; we have to do whatever he wants.” But that’s the thrust of what some influential Republicans and conservatives are saying.

Most strikingly, it’s coming from Republican members of the legislative branch, whom the Constitution empowers to legislate and sign off on Trump’s nominees. They were elected in their own right, but they seem to be saying: Trump’s all that matters.

Perhaps most remarkable were the comments Wednesday of Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Texas), a Trump ally who has become known for his unvarnished commentary.

“So now he’s got a mission statement of his mission and his goals and objectives,” Nehls said. “Whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word. If Donald Trump says jump 3 feet high and scratch your head, we all jump 3 feet high and scratch our heads. And that’s it.”

It’s hardly just Nehls.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., on Fox News on Wednesday night offered a similar thought.

While talking about Trump’s controversial Cabinet picks, like former congressman Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for attorney general and former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) for director of national intelligence, Donalds noted that the senators will do their due diligence. (Trump also nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary Thursday, in another pick that will surely test his party’s willingness to go along with his desires.)

“But they’re going to make sure that Donald Trump’s agenda passes, because it is the Trump agenda that the American people overwhelmingly wants. It is a political mandate,” Donalds said. “It is not for the senators to decide what will they want to have happen; it’s the will of the voters through Donald Trump. That’s what needs to happen.”

Just to underscore: “It is not for the senators to decide.”

One of those senators, Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., seemed to agree while discussing whether new Senate GOP Leader John Thune, R.-S.D., was on board with Trump’s agenda.

Tuberville even suggested the true Senate GOP leaders were in the executive branch.

“There was a mandate last week … that said, ‘Hey, we want President Trump to have his team. We want to take back our country. Republicans, if you’re not on the team, get out of the way,’ ” Tuberville said Wednesday on Fox Business Network.

He added: “I think (Thune will) do a good job. But again, President Trump and JD Vance are going to be running the Senate.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kansas) had a pithy response when asked Wednesday about Gaetz’s nomination. Massie suggested Trump could just appoint Gaetz via recess appointment, without the consent of the Senate.

“He’s the attorney general; suck it up!” Massie said.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., had similar advice for Democrats on Wednesday morning.

“All these folks on the Left threatening to stop Donald Trump or prevent him from enacting certain policies. You’re literally threatening to stop the will of the People who have overwhelmingly spoken,” Mace said on X.

The first thing to note is that much of this commentary overstates Trump’s mandate. He and the GOP won all three levers of power, but hardly by resounding or “overwhelming” margins.

His electoral vote haul will be slightly larger than his first one in 2016 and President Joe Biden’s in 2020, but it will rank on the lower side historically and for recent decades. It also seems likely Trump will have fallen short of a majority of the popular vote when all the votes are counted, meaning a majority of voters will have preferred somebody else.

To be clear, Trump won – and decisively so in the swing states. But a 1.5-point popular vote win and 49-point-something percent doesn’t exactly scream that the American people pre-emptively signed off on whatever you want to do.

Voters actually chose Democrats in the Senate races in most of the swing states Trump won. You don’t have to get too creative to argue that’s a signal that the most important voters actually wanted a check on Trump.

But more than that, it’s really something to take those results and interpret them as neutering Congress and rendering its will and sign-off moot.

Our constitutional system was not only set up with checks and balances like the Senate’s “advice and consent” role for presidential nominations, but small-government conservatives will often argue that it’s actually the legislative branch that’s supposed to be preeminent.

“In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates,” James Madison wrote in Federalist 51.

You can argue that the Senate should generally be deferential in Cabinet picks – as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., often does and is doing in signaling he’ll vote for Trump’s nominees. But that’s not the same as saying the legislature should bow to whatever Trump wants because of his mythical stunning mandate.