How to shut down Trump's dishonest economic boasting in 3 easy steps
Yesterday, professional liar and amateur, well, liar Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted this:
Mark that day down, folks, because SHS actually (albeit accidentally) told the truth: You can’t make it up, because what Obama said is already true. He does deserve the credit.
And no, the economy is not better under Trump. Not remotely.
You can prove this yourself in mere seconds anytime you need to slap down an economically benighted Trumpite, nearly all of whom have swallowed the new conventional “wisdom” that the economy faltered for years under Obama and has miraculously sprung to life under Trump.
Step 1: Go to this official Bureau of Labor Statistics page, which shows monthly job creation since 2007.
Step 2: Download the jobs chart on that page in Excel format.
Step 3: Add up the figures in the relevant rows for an apples-to-apples comparison between years. (Excel makes this easy for you. Simply select the cells you want to add and Excel will display the sum at the bottom of the page.)
Complete steps 1 through 3 and, voilà, you get this handy chart, suitable for framing or for posting on the Facebook page of your closest, most goddamn imbecilic relative:
Since Trump was president for only a handful of days in January, we can’t count that month. And the December jobs report has yet to be released. But we can still easily compare Obama’s economic performance over his final six years in office (when the economy finally started recovering from the ruinous policies of the Derp administration) with Trump’s. Even if you include January — which would make for a wildly inaccurate comparison — Trump still sucks wind. But including January would vastly improve Obama’s jobs numbers in 2012 (the only year in which he lags behind Trump), because the economy added 358,000 jobs that month — a full 126,000 jobs more than Trump has added in any single month. (The above numbers, of course, are in thousands. Don’t be surprised if you have to explain that to your friendly neighborhood Trump fan.)
As you can see, Obama beat Trump’s brains out in five out of the past six years. In fact, from February through November 2014 (Obama’s best year for job creation), the economy created 2,553,000 jobs — a redonkulous 853,000 more than Trump has added this year.
So here’s an idea. If you’re sick of dumbass Trump fans braying about the state of the economy ad nauseam, print out the above chart and put it in your wallet. Or screen grab it and post it anytime you hear a Trumpite caterwauling about the Trumpian economic miracle. When the new jobs report comes out next month, you can quickly and easily make your own chart and continue to spread the truth far and wide.
So far, the only thing Trump has going in his favor is that he’s slowed down Obama’s pace of job creation just a little.
But make no mistake about it — he has slowed it down.
Go tell it on the mountain.
P.S. Yes, there are economic metrics besides job creation that continue to impress (mostly thanks to Obama). For instance, the stock market continues to set records … just as it did month after month under Obama. But let’s not forget that the wealthiest 10 percent of the population owns 80 percent of all U.S. stock value. Your average rabid Trump fan likely owns few to no stocks. Trump also likes to brag that we’ve surpassed 3 percent GDP growth the past two quarters. But Obama’s economy surpassed 3 percent growth numerous times, including in 2014 when we hit 4.6 percent growth in the second quarter and 5.2 percent in the third quarter. (And that’s after Obama inherited one of the worst economies any new president has ever had to contend with.) Trump’s economy has yet to come close to that. And we’re just getting started. After all, it took George W. Bush almost eight years to completely screw up our job and stock markets. Don't be surprised if Trump does it less than half that time.
