When George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000 but became president anyway, he did so with almost 50.5 million votes. I didn’t know that number until I looked it up, because it would have been unimaginable for that president — even though he could be quite demagogic — to brandish it as proof that he represented some quasi-mystical conception of “the people,” in contrast to the nearly 51 million citizens who voted for his opponent.
Anyone who pays attention to politics, however, knows that Donald Trump got around 63 million votes in 2016.