President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies have repeatedly used words like "landslide," "historic" and "mandate" to describe his narrow victory over former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

In reality, it was a close election: Trump won the national popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent, and his victories in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin were in the low single digits. But during a late April interview with journalists Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer for The Atlantic, Trump doubled down on his "landslide" rhetoric — even as his poll numbers plummet.

Trump told Parker and Scherer, "What can be said? I won the election in a landslide, and there isn't anyone who can say anything about that. What can they write about?"

During the interview, Trump painted himself as enjoying great popularity. But a late April poll from NBC News finds his approval at 45 percent. And in a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll released in late April, Trump's approval is at only 39 percent.Regardless, Trump, true to form, projected a lot of confidence during the interview.

"Trump and his team realized that they could behave with near impunity by embracing controversies and scandals that would have taken down just about any other president — as long as they showed no weakness," Parker and Scherer explain. "Even now, Trump — who described himself to us as 'a very positive thinker' — struggles to admit that his return to power was a comeback."

The reporters add, "To concede that he'd had to come back would be to admit that he had fallen in the first place. "

Reprinted with permission from Alternet