On This Day In 2020
“Nobody can beat me on the economy.” Actually? Almost every president since FDR did.
In countless rallies and social media posts, Trump brags that he gave America “the greatest economy in the history of our country.” That is a completely made-up fiction. Yet, some voters simply believe him without actually checking the data first.
OTDI 2020, the government released a new batch of data about our nation’s economic health. Note, this was still pre-Covid meltdown. Yet, even then, the growth of the economy under Trump was “well below what previous presidents achieved.” Forbes proclaimed that expansion under Trump was “Slower Than Obama’s Last 3 Years.”
Sometimes it takes only two seconds to disprove a lie Trump told 100 times.
Do those three red bars at the right end of the PolitiFact graph, representing the three years of growth under Trump, look like the highest-ever growth bars to you? To us, they look like the lowest.
@PolitiFact explains Trump’s claim by quoting @DeanBaker13, co-founder of the liberal @CEPRDC:
"While Trump can take some credit, I see it like the relief pitcher who comes in during the 9th inning with a seven-run lead, then boasts about winning the game… It’s fine to get some credit for holding the lead, but this is much more an Obama story than a Trump story."
And what about Biden's economy?
In 2023, The Economist analyzed “…America’s astonishing economic record. The world’s biggest economy is leaving its peers ever further in the dust.”
This week, @davidjlynch at Washington Post noted that “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery. How did this happen under Biden? “We earned this; it wasn’t just a fluke,” observed @Claudia_Sahm
Sources:
The BEA’s GDP estimate is here
PolitiFact’s analysis of Trump’s economic boasting
Forbes’s analysis of Trump-era economic growth
The Economist in 2023 on Biden’s performance
Lynch and Rahm are here in this Sunday’s WaPo
Trump's economy worst since Hoover's?