Every night of the Republican National Convention will have its own specific theme, and last night the was focus on “Making America Wealthy Again.” Before even hearing the party’s pitch, the label is at odds with the status quo: The United States has the strongest economy on the planet and is currently “the envy of the world.”
Nevertheless, that’s not what attendees and viewers heard from Republican convention speakers.
“Under President Trump,” Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas declared, “we had the greatest economy in our lifetime.” Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama went further, insisting, “Under President Trump, we had the strongest economy in history. That’s right.”
Except, there’s nothing “right” about the claim at all. A Washington Post fact-check piece explained:
Britt is repeating one of Trump’s favorite falsehoods. Before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered businesses and sent unemployment soaring, the president could certainly brag about the state of the economy in his first three years as president. But he ran into trouble when he made a play for the history books to say it was the best economy in U.S. history. By just about any important measure, the economy under Trump did not do as well as it did under Presidents Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton.
The Post’s piece actually understates matters. The economy didn’t do as well as it did under Barack Obama, either.
Even if we exclude 2020, when the pandemic created a sharp and sudden recession, the story that Republicans prefer to tell about Trump’s economic record is at odds with the facts. The Post published a memorable analysis on this as 2019 neared its end.
There’s no telling Trump that the economy is anything but sensational under his stewardship, of course, and there’s no telling him that it’s doing well for any reason other than his stewardship. Generally speaking, the economy is doing well, though there are ongoing concerns that the economic boom is slowing. But given Trump’s habit of comparing his performance to history, we thought it was worth comparing economic metrics under Trump to the second term of the last guy to hold Trump’s job: Barack Obama.
It’s not what Republicans wanted to hear, but comparing the economy under Obama and Trump at the same points in their presidencies, the Post found that the economy grew faster under Obama, hiring grew faster under Obama, the S&P 500 grew faster under Obama, the unemployment rate shrunk faster under Obama, and the national debt grew slower under Obama.
The analysis concluded, “[I]f we are linking economic numbers to presidential performance, Trump’s insistence that his abilities are unparalleled are rendered somewhat suspect in that he ranks second out of the last two presidents on a lot of these indicators.” Remember, all of this was true before the pandemic took a severe toll on the economy. Trump, of course, also ranks behind President Joe Biden, who has a stronger record than his GOP predecessor on job growth, unemployment and economic growth. In other words, at the opening night of the Republican convention, the party was eager to rewrite recent history — something Republicans do with unnerving frequency, as I write about in my soon-to-be-released second book — but the facts are stubborn.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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