This Trump quote says it all

April 30: On This Day In 2020

“I built the greatest economy — with the help of 325 million people, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world. . . . I built it.” – DJT

Ridiculous? Well, OTDI 2020, the former Republican Max Boot -- op-ed columnist for the Washington Post -- noted that Trump’s boast “doesn’t even make the Top 10 list of the most outrageous things that Trump has said during the past week.”

Sufficiently outrageous or not, it does a remarkable job of illustrating three pillars Trump frequently employs to support his public pronouncements:

1. Hubris: He talks about his personal abilities in extraordinary, God-like tones. At his 2016 RNC coronation, Trump bragged that “I alone can fix” ills afflicting our nation. So this quote was perhaps his way of claiming to have kept his economic promises and fulfilled his messianic destiny. By the way, he apparently performed this miracle with only modest help from the rest of us minor-role-player Americans.  As Boot points out, “A far milder comment by Obama set off a thermonuclear reaction in 2012.” Obama had suggested that the government has at least some hand in the success of our economy, No, our nation’s vigor is due exclusively to the guile of the American entrepreneur and worker, the GOP said back then.  Now Trump takes nearly exclusive credit for himself, and the obedient GOP doesn’t raise a peep.  

2. Alternative Facts: As we’ve shown in previous OTDIs (for example, Jan. 30 ) Trump’s economy was not even the greatest American economy of the past decade, let alone “the greatest economy in the history of the world.” By several measures, Trump’s economy was weaker than Obama’s even before Trump mishandled Covid. Note: Now in 2024, Trump has turned his fire to Biden’s economy, arguing “We are a nation whose economy is collapsing into a cesspool of ruin.” CNBC responded “But the numbers paint a different picture.” Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi elaborated: "The U.S. economy is leading the way for the global economy. It’s driving the global economic train.”  

3. Double Down: Most humans would start correcting themselves after being gently informed that they were wrong about a basic fact. Not Trump: he doubled-down on this lie. Well, actually, he did more than “double” down on it…he told a version of it 493 times.

Trump's three pillars

Despite the quote’s absurdity, recent 2024 polling shows that more Americans believe Trump did more for the economy than has Biden. Gotta give Trump credit, then, for leaning on his three pillars: He gets millions of people to fall for his outrageousness.

Dive Deeper

• @maxboot's assesses Trump’s galling hypocrisy

• The Washington Post counts Trump’s 493 lies on this issue

• The Hill details recent polling on Americans’ view of the economy

• CNBC assesses the current economy vs Trump’s

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Summary: This Trump quote says it all