Donald Trump is the consummate “born on third base, thinks he scored a home run” guy. Despite the fact that a flourishing economy was waiting for him when he took office, he continues to take credit for gains that have slowed, but are still building on the prior administration’s efforts.
Trump would love for voters to believe that the economy was in terrible shape when he took office and that, like Obama, he single-handedly fixed it all. That’s simply untrue. Obama took office during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and turned it around, recovering the plummeting unemployment rate and sinking wages to keep the United States economy from crashing entirely.
Trump, on the other hand, deserves credit only for the fact that he hasn’t totally destroyed those gains yet. They are, however, going much more slowly than before. The unemployment rate remains at 3.7 percent and temporary holiday hiring is likely to be credited for a large portion of the new jobs added.
All of this will impact the midterms significantly. As Trump insists that his own and other countries’ human rights abuses should be ignored because of the booming economy, voters are likely to note that their pay has not increased, their futures are no more secure than they were before, and that they’re not doing as well as Trump tries to insist that they are.
Twitter hasn’t forgotten any of this. Read some of their comments below:
Featured image via Flickr by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons license