As inflation continues to ebb and we begin to see truly gaudy economic numbers (a 3.7% unemployment rate, an almost unheard of 5.2% GDP growth rate, and a surging stock market!), President Joe Biden has a great story to tell. Trump also has a story to tell, but it’s not based on economic metrics so much as the pornographic Plinko game in his head.
When America expectorated Donald Trump from its quavering corpus in November 2020, he left office as the worst jobs president since the Great Depression. So when he talks about President Joe Biden potentially leading us into a new depression, he kind of—in a weird way—knows what he’s talking about.
And so on Wednesday, the same day the Dow reached an all-time high, Trump warned Iowa rallygoers that Biden’s economic stewardship will soon plunge us into another Great Depression. And it's possible that Trump knows something economists don’t and we’ll soon be standing in bread lines and scooping up Trump NFTs at bargain-basement prices. It’s also possible Matt Gaetz will win the Nobel Prize for beach.
In other words, don’t hold your breath.
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But as Rolling Stone reports:
Trump, who accomplished the feat of becoming the first president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression to leave the country with fewer jobs by the end of his one-term presidency, claimed that the “Biden administration is running on the fumes of the great success of the Trump Administration.” He added, addressing his supporters: “Without us this thing would have crashed to levels never seen before, and if we’re not elected we’ll have a depression the likes of which I don’t believe anybody has ever seen… maybe 1929?”
While Trump’s economic legacy has been hotly debated, under his administration the unemployment rate surged to 14.7 percent in April [2020] and by the time he left office the following January, the rate had receded to 6.3 percent. Many economists have pointed to the former president’s disastrous leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic as having exacerbated the country’s economic downturn at the time.
By now, we should all be keenly aware that Trump just says stuff. Whether it’s true or not hardly concerns him. For instance, anyone who criticizes him—even a little—is automatically the worst person ever. Just ask super-overrated 21-time Oscar nominee—and three-time winner—Meryl Streep.
Case in point: In 2020, Trump predicted Biden would crash the economy if he won. (Narrator: He didn’t.)
But Trump’s latest statement is particularly risible given the current state of our economy, which has shown steady growth and improvement—despite those unavoidable spikes in inflation—since Biden fumigated the Oval Office nearly three years ago.
Furthermore? If we took Trump’s timeless advice, the House would definitely not be launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden for the high crime of being a Democrat in the White House. Consider this 2019 tweet (there’s always a tweet):
Of course, many Americans are only too happy to excuse Pervert Hoover’s awful economic legacy in light of the pandemic-related disruptions we experienced, which would have almost certainly challenged anyone in office at the time. Which is fair. It’s also fair to ask how much the Trump administration’s botched COVID-19 response led to our Great Depression-like economic numbers.
What’s clearly unfair, though, is blaming Biden for post-pandemic-related inflation while giving Trump a pass for the truly awful economy he left behind—especially since Biden has handled post-COVID price surges better than almost every other wealthy countries’ leaders.
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Meanwhile, in case you still doubt that Trump just regurgitates whatever barmy bits bedevil his brain from one moment to the next, he’s also still obsessed with the fact that he’s inferior to former President Barack Obama in every way. So much so that he feels the need to say outrageously untrue things in order to soothe his creaky ego.
At the same Iowa rally, Trump cited the professional—and very weird—opinion of Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House doctor, to claim he’s in better physical shape than Obama. Shocker: He couched this assertion in a signature “sir” story.
“He was Obama’s doctor, too, by the way,” the ex-real estate tycoon reminded the crowd at the Hyatt Hotel.
“I said, ‘Who’s healthier?’ He said, ‘Sir, there’s no contest.’ I won’t tell you the answer, but you know the answer, okay? It was me.”
He went even further, quoting his old physician as saying: “‘If he didn’t eat junk food, he’d live to 200 years old.’ That’s my kind of a doctor.”
On whether he believed his advanced years could become an issue – as he has repeatedly insisted is the case for 81-year-old Mr Biden – Mr Trump said: “I’ll be the first to know. But I feel that right now I’m sharper than I was 20 years ago, and I don’t know why.
That’s a mystery for the ages. And is it really possible he can spot the difference between a lion and a rhinoceros even faster than he could 20 years ago? Because that would be scary. Before you know it, he’ll be Bradley Cooper in “Limitless.” Or maybe the lab mouse in “Flowers for Algernon.”
Come to think of it, that seems slightly more on-brand.
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