Trump's Big CON: 'I Saved Us', The Economy Edition

UPDATE III:  After just seven months in office, The Donald is claiming credit "record low" unemployment.

(You might remember that when he took office America was a 'rotten place, a decimated, destroyed and weak country'.)

"The short answer is that this is false. The unemployment rate in July was 4.3 percent. It was 4.8 percent in January, when Trump took office, so it was already rather low.

Moreover, six of the past 12 presidents could brag of an unemployment rate lower than 4.3 percent. It was as low as 4.2 percent under George W. Bush, 3.9 percent under Bill Clinton, 4.2 percent under Richard Nixon, 3.4 percent under Lyndon B. Johnson, 2.5 percent under Dwight D. Eisenhower and 2.7 percent under Harry Truman."

Read the Washington Post, President Trump’s claim that ‘unemployment is at a record low’.

Now repeat after me:  He's so pretty!

UPDATE II:  On Sunday, the Republican National Committee tweeted:

"GOP
@GOP

UNPRECEDENTED ECONOMIC GROWTH UNDER @POTUS!
7:07 PM - Aug 6, 2017

To be clear: 'unprecedented' means it has never happened before. This tweet strongly suggests that '1 million new jobs in six months' never happened before Trump took office. And that suggestion would be wrong — very wrong.

In fact, President Barack Obama actually saw slightly more jobs created in his final six months — 1.08 million — than Trump has in his first six — 1.07 million. And Obama also saw more jobs created than Trump:

    In the first six months of 2016 (1.08 million)
    In the last six months of 2015 (1.34 million)
    In the first six months of 2015 (1.37 million)
    In the last six months of 2014 (1.5 million)
    In the first six months of 2014 (1.5 million)
    In the last six months of 2013 (1.09 million)

Indeed, no matter how you slice it and what months you choose, there isn't even one six-month period after mid-2013 during which Obama didn't see at least 1 million jobs created. One million jobs in six months is not unprecedented -- it has become the norm since the recovery from the Great Recession really kicked in.

Which got me thinking: Maybe the RNC tweet meant the first six months of a presidency? Even then, though, Bill Clinton saw more jobs created -- 1.25 million — in his first six months in 1993. None other than Jimmy Carter saw twice as many created as Trump — 2.14 million — in 1977. And if you adjusted for today's population size, George H.W. Bush (about 900,000 jobs created in 1989) would also beat Trump's vaunted 1 million standard.

So three of Trump's six immediate predecessors had at least his jobs numbers in their first six months (again, population-adjusted in one of those cases). Two others — Obama and George W. Bush — began their presidencies in recessions."

Read the Washington Post, The RNC says Trump’s jobs numbers are ‘unprecedented,’ because words don’t matter anymore.

UPDATE:  "Trump hasn't actually done anything other than cut a few regulations, but he's made it sound like he's passed a new New Deal. ('No administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days,' he rather ludicrously claimed.) He brags about a 'surging economy and jobs,' despite the fact that the economy and jobs are growing at exactly the same rate as before he took office. And, after disparaging the official unemployment rate as being 'fake' and 'phony' and 'totally fiction' while Obama was president, he has apparently decided that it's 'very real now.' In other words, Trump has done nothing and has congratulated himself for the economy Obama left behind.

Well, it's not just him doing the praising. Trump's new propaganda channel is, too. "

Read the Washington Post, For the last time, Trump hasn’t made the economy any better., which included this graph:

"Every president talks up the economy. It's part of a president's job to be America's cheerleader-in-chief. But half a year into Trump's presidency, the reality is the economy is solid. It's not booming. And there's no 'Trump bump' -- yet.

'On balance, it’s hard to see a Trump bump,' says Doug Holtz-Eakin, head of the right-leaning American Action Forum and an economic adviser to many Republicans. 'The economy is solid. It’s not spectacular.'

To see how the Trump economy is really doing, look at growth, jobs, wages and business spending. All of those factors are showing no change since the days of President Obama.

Yes, more Americans are getting jobs. Hiring in July was stronger than experts expected, with a net gain of 209,000 jobs. That's good news, but the pace of hiring is a tad worse than under President Obama. The economy has added 1,074,000 jobs since Trump took office. During the same stretch last year, the economy gained 1,246,000 jobs under Obama. The fastest growing job category last month was low-paying retail jobs. Trump used to slam Obama for only creating crummy jobs. Now that's part of the Trump story, too.

'On the jobs metric, there's no Trump bump,' says Chirs Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG bank in New York. 'It's pretty consistent with the final year of Obama’s administration.'

As for stocks: The market is going up. It gained more than 20 percent since Trump won the election. But Wall Street is not Main Street, and about half of America has $0 in the market. Numerous studies have shown that better stock returns don't mean a turbocharged economy is on the way with more growth and higher wages for the middle class.

The stock market may be going up, but wages are not. On the campaign trail, Trump frequently decried how middle class incomes were lower now than in 2000. He promised to change that, yet the jobs report that Trump called 'excellent' showed that wages only increased 2.5 percent in the past year. That's below America's historic average and the same pace that Obama achieved."

Read the Washington Post, America’s economy is solid, but there’s no ‘Trump bump’.