It turns out that few believe Donald Trump’s insistence that the economy is doing well for most people – any more than those same voters turned on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a year ago.
Trump’s shouted, rat-a-tat presentation of defense economy storytelling in a presidential address this week fell flat, despite his exhortation of favored, cherry-picked economic numbers that he insisted tell a better record than what you and I experience in the supermarket, looking for jobs or housing, or clearly face in rising utility and health costs.
But then so are his claims about why Venezuela deserves to be punished, or whether millions will lost Obamacare coverage, or that everyone being picked up randomly by border agents is a criminal in hiding.
The biggest potential growth industry right now may be fact-checking.
Our legacy-come-to-fruition is that too many people don’t want to believe anything beyond their personal experience – whether in economics, vaccine safety, perceived dangers from transgender care and distaste for undocumented immigration or “weaponization” of justice against preferred candidates. Even more want news coverage that matches their pre-conceived notions about their ideological side, particularly on prices, jobs and consumer confidence.
At end of year, Trump seems to be flailing to persuade voters that he even understands the complaints, never mind coming up with useful solutions. So he turns ugly about culture issues that are easier to digest and one-off schemes to send out checks to troops from the taxes we already paid.
It’s useful to note that even when there are “facts,” – inflation and jobless numbers emerged this week – the government’s manipulation of how to count, when to count, and delayed or hidden information makes any assertion these days hard to accept at face value.
The long-promised release of the Jeffrey Epstein files seems to have backfired on the Trump administration, which sought to hold them until a congressional revolt forced their hand, and now are responding with a broad blackout pen that makes even the illegally delayed releases less than useful. Though we know Trump is mentioned repeatedly, we almost nothing of his presence in the released documents.
On prices, polling and public reaction are showing that Trump has lost trust and credibility.
Trump’s decision to offer rapid-fire presentation of his favored facts have trouble lining with lived experience. Gas prices dropped precipitously over a year ago though no one can find under $2 a gallon gas at any gas station and heating oil is up 9 percent, egg prices declined after passage of a bird flu and government infusion of a billion dollars in eggs imports, and “housing” costs will decline shortly because borrowing costs may be forced downward without reference to availability or the cost of rent and home ownership while jobs are falling.
Politics, Sure, But Worse
The result is being described mostly in partisan political terms. Trump’s chosen blindness to “affordability” is seen as a fatal political blow that will result in a change in congressional majority next November, for example, or eating away now at his influence to dictate strategies foreign and domestic.
Fox News presented the Trump speech as if it were indisputable, though there were televised critics; Breitbart praised checks to military troops as a wonderful idea despite its predictable inflationary result and misuse of funds meant for military housing. Most mainstream outlets pointed out the gaps between what Trump says and what the various official and unofficial market surveys and voter polls say about the economy.
What we need, of course, is not more political cheerleading and more political spin. What we need are consistent measures of various economic trends that arrive on time and are useful for comparisons of the same measures over time. The Trump administration’s consistent strategy in economics and tariffs, immigration and crime, justice prosecutions and Homeland Security operations is to undercut, cancel and hide facts to make it more difficult to make useful comparisons – whether month to month or against previous presidential terms.
So, Trump simply asserts as true whatever he wants, whether it is about miracle cures for asthma and communicable disease, airline traffic, guns or environment. The same government that cannot count how many deportees actually had criminal records is now telling us what to believe about inflation and high prices that is not observable.
If he is only handed briefings pre-screened for spin, perhaps it’s no wonder he airs what comports with his autocratic choices.
That Trump lacks the wherewithal to question what he is handed and only has voice to insist is a bad quality for a leader.
