Trump Lied About Economy 64 Times In A Single Tweet

Trump Lied About Economy 64 Times In A Single Tweet

Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.

Trump has racked up thousands of lies in his short tenure in the White House — but his most recent statement about the economy essentially managed to squeeze 64 lies into a single tweet.

Trump falsely claimed that U.S. GDP growth (which was 4.2 percent last quarter) is higher than the country’s unemployment rate (currently 3.9 percent) for the first time in more than 100 years.

Like much of what Trump says, this is flatly untrue. But even for Trump, it’s a whopper of epic proportions.

The Washington Post points out that since World War II, “GDP has topped the unemployment rate 64 times.”

Trump’s statement would be a lie even if GDP had topped unemployment just once in the past century.

But it hasn’t happened just once, or twice, or even 20 times. It has happened 64 times in the last 70 years.

In one tweet, Trump lied about every single one of those 64 years.

For what it’s worth, GDP was higher than unemployment as recently as 12 years ago, under the George W. Bush administration. It also happened several times under President Clinton.

President Obama inherited the Great Recession from Bush, and spent eight years rebuilding the economy from the brink of disaster, so it’s no surprise that the phenomenon did not happen during his two terms.

By inheriting a growing economy from President Obama, Trump started his tenure on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

But as the Post’s Philip Bump explained, it doesn’t even make sense in the first place for Trump to specifically brag about the unemployment rate being lower than the GDP.

“One is a rate of change; one is a metric, which is a bit like saying the Chicago Bears are doing better than the Green Bay Packers because their score increased 100 percent from the second to third quarters while the Packers have only 75 percent of the points,” Bump wrote.

Trump isn’t just inventing ahistorical alternative facts — he’s comparing apples to checkers.

And Trump is “desperately cherry-picking the data” in other ways, Bump explained. Trump used GDP growth from the spring of 2018 (April through June), but unemployment data from the late summer, August 2018.

Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans are doing their best to sabotage this supposedly great economy.

The GOP exploded the deficit to enact a tax scam that showers billions of dollars onto the wealthy elite while leaving the middle class behind. More than 80 percent of the scam’s benefits go to the richest 1 percent, but half of Americans will eventually see their taxes increase.

While the unemployment number is good, wages for middle-class families are falling. And while the stock market is doing well, more than 90 percent of stocks are owned by the richest 20 percent of households.

As Trump tells epic lies to brag about the state of the economy, millions of Americans are still struggling just to make ends meet.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

 

Start your day with National Memo Newsletter

Know first.

The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

President Biden Signs Spending Bill To Avert Shutdown, Urges Ukraine Aid
President Joe Biden with First Lady Jill Biden as he signs gun and school safety legislation

WASHINGTON, March 23 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a $1.2 trillion spending package, keeping the U.S. government funded through a fiscal year that began six months ago.Biden described the package, which Congress overwhelmingly passed in the early hours of Saturday, as investing in Americans as well as strengthening the economy and national security. The Democratic president urged Congress to pass other bills stuck in the legislative chambers.

Keep reading...Show less
January 6 riot

Police munitions explode as Trump supporters riot at US Capitol on January 6, 2021

Photo by Leah Millis/REUTERS

It may come as a surprise to hear that I actually agree with Donald Trump on something: America does have a two-tiered system of justice. In fact, you could say I beat him to it since I reached that conclusion long before the former president adopted it as his mantra.

Keep reading...Show less
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}