Trump likes the mandate, but that is such wimpy language. More explicitly Trump likes forcing people to buy a product, albeit a more competitive product, and using the IRS to enforce their compliance. In my book that is tyranny!
One thing I have noticed about the people who are solidly in Trump’s corner. They only seen in him what they want to see. If they want to see a limited government pro-life conservative, then that is what they see, even when he espouses big government and pro-abortion positions. They just don’t see that. “I like the mandate” “planned parenthood does a lot of great things”
They can’t deal with that stuff because it doesn’t jive with their religious idea of who their candidate is. So they either make excuses for it, discount it, or pretend he never said it.
I see the same behavior in religious cults. I came out of a religious cult where that kind of cognitive dissonance was rampant. What we are witnessing is more of a religious phenomenon than a political one.