When I launched this newsletter on Substack four years ago, two things were clear:
One: Trump's claims that he had created the greatest economy in American history were patently ridiculous. At Davos in January 2020 he claimed: “the United States is in the midst of an economic boom, the likes of which the world has never seen before.”
Two: The mainstream media, despite the fact that they should have known better, were going along with Trump's snake-oil nonsense. If Trump said it, they parroted his comments, without explaining to readers or viewers that Trump’s claims were total horseshit.
In a series of articles in January and February 2020, including this one right after that Davos speech, I set out to explain why the Trump economy was nowhere near as strong as he claimed.
Now, as part of my new video efforts on YouTube and beyond, I have turned some of the facts about Trump's economic failures into a short video—"Destroying the Myth of the Trump Economy":
This video focuses on Trump's Presidency as it stood after three years, before Covid hit. The goal is to push back on the myth, still widely accepted, that things were just peachy until that pesky Covid "flu" came along.
Thanks for checking out the video! And please subscribe to my YouTube channel if you’d like to encourage me to make more videos.
Biden’s leadership has delivered the world's greatest post-pandemic economic recovery.
Four years later, we're at the same stage of the Biden presidency as we were when Trump spoke at Davos in 2020.
The only difference: Thanks to Biden, the US economy at the start of 2024 is truly on a roll.
Instead of seeing that celebrated on the front page of the newspapers as 2024 began, we were still hearing that Joe Biden was past it, losing a step, and perhaps too old for the job.
A month into the New Year, the media can no longer deny the strength of the US economy. The job market continues to show incredible strength, stocks are up, wages are up, consumer confidence is rebounding strongly, and crime is down. (Which is why Fox News has launched a new season of The Migrant Caravan.)
Most days, of course, the Biden Boom is not quite front page news.
As @LOLGOP noted, The Washington Post put its recent headline about Biden delivering the "world’s best recovery" on page 8.
The Post put this in the "Shhh! Don't tell anyone!" section on page 8. pic.twitter.com/1oTejnWoBE
— L O L G O P (@LOLGOP) January 28, 2024
While it's bad enough that the media is failing to report on Biden's real economic successes as breathlessly as they did Trump's fake ones, it's even worse that they have still not quite corrected themselves in the ways they report about the Trump economy, pre-Covid.
The narrative that has been maintained throughout the past four years is that Trump did a great job on the economy, and if it wasn’t for Covid, many now (or still) believe he would’ve coasted to reelection.
The truth, of course, as readers of this newsletter have always known, is totally different. The Trump recession began in February 2020, before Covid lockdowns.
10 facts that document Trump's economic failure
Here are the 10 facts—and sources—presented in my new video:
- Trump failed on jobs: Trump created 1.5 million fewer jobs in his first 36 months than Obama created in the prior 36 months.
- Trump failed on manufacturing: Manufacturing was in a recession for all of 2019.
- Trump failed steelworkers: Thousands of steelworkers got layoff notices just before Christmas 2019. An estimated 75,000 manufacturing jobs were lost because of Trump tariffs on steel and aluminum.
- Trump failed coal miners: 11 coal companies filed for bankruptcy during his first 3 years in office.
- Trump failed farmers: Farm bankruptcies rose 24% in 2019—the farm bailouts failed.
- Trump failed dairy farmers most of all: 818 dairy farms went bankrupt in Wisconsin in 2019—the highest number ever.
- Trump failed the poor: Between 2017 and 2019, poverty grew in one third of all US counties.
- Trump failed rural communities: Trump began 2020 with a plan to cut Food Stamps for 700,000 SNAP recipients—a move that would have devastated already hard-hit rural communities.
- Trump failed on the debt: Trump’s tax cuts for the rich sent the deficit soaring to more than $1 trillion a year, skyrocketing the debt, even as he incentivized US corporations to send more jobs overseas.
- Trump failed on the economy: He brought the record-breaking Obama-Biden recovery to end with a recession that started in February 2020, before Covid lockdowns even began
The crash of 2020 was made worse because of Trump's recklessness once the Covid pandemic began. But the economic distress America suffered began long before that.
It wasn't caused by the "brilliant germ." It was caused by the fact Trump is, and has always been, a con artist, a psychopath, and a nincompoop.
Thanks for reading! In case any journalists want to refresh their memories, I've pasted links to few of my early 2020 articles about the mythical "Trump Economy" below these buttons:
1/2/2020:
“The American middle class is drowning.”
If you’re tired of all Trump’s “winning,” it’s because we’re really losing.
1/10/2020:
December Disaster
Year-end jobs reports shows the “Trump miracle” is a mirage
1/22/2020:
The “Trump Steaks” Economy
Just one bite and you can taste the deception
2/4/2020:
The State of the Union Is Bleak
Instead of fixing things as promised, Trump is making everything worse.
2/16/2020:
Don’t Believe The Hype
29 reasons why the Trump Economy is far weaker than he wants you to think
2/23/2020:
The “Trump Boom” Goes Bust
He promised 5% to 6% GDP growth. In February, growth is plunging below 1%.
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