Donald Trump’s “Hometown” Newpaper Endorses Biden
Ignore pundits, sure, but consider the evidence piling up against Trump | Editorial
“Trump has openly demonstrated why, even if you put character aside – which we can’t — the nation would have much to fear from his second term.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of World War II should fear his autocratic sympathies and inclination to walk away from NATO, leaving Europe and the United States vulnerable to Putin’s dreams of a new world order.
On the domestic front, his threats to further unravel women’s autonomy and union protections should concern millions as well, as should his racist and antisemitic dog whistles and buddying-up with white nationalists, and the campaign contributions that pay his lawyers’ bills.
And sure, though it seems increasingly unlikely, he could win a round or two in the courts. And if he won a new term in office, he could erase any impact that the prosecutions might have had. But you’ll know what he did.
So, before that happens, as you consider your ballot, though you might prefer his tilt to the right to Biden’s tilt to the left, ask yourself if this is the quality of a man who should represent you, speak for you, act in your name, be the master of your universe. Don’t listen to the pundits. Just look at the evidence.
Consider President Biden’s performance, as well: Unquestioned support for our allies; for women’s autonomy; for union protection of middle-class jobs; for infrastructure improvement; for high-tech industry expansion; for manufacturing resurgence; for climate repair; for common sense gun regulations. Inflation is low, employment, high. Don’t listen to the noise; look at the evidence.
You have a chance to alert the Republican political class that has fallen in line behind Trump and the fringe. GOP leaders think extreme is what you want. But is it? If indeed you’re an independent-minded sort, let the evidence speak to you. And then speak to them with your votes.”
An internet friend’s tweet:
My MAGA Quiz (For some reason, MAGA folks refuse to answer these questions?)
Question #1
More new jobs created per month?
a) Obama
b) Trump
c) Biden
Timer – 30 seconds – answer below:
Answer: A&C – Both Obama and Biden created more new jobs than Trump did Pre-Covid of his term.
Primary Source: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth
Daniel Dale’s Fact Checking:
“Job growth under Biden and Trump
Trump claimed, “During Biden’s first 30 months in office, just 2.1 million new jobs have been created nationwide.” After a digression into other criticism of Biden, he continued, “By contrast, during the first 30 months of President Trump, we created 4.9 million new jobs, shattering all predictions and projections.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim that just 2.1 million new jobs were created in Biden’s first 30 months in office is false. Without mentioning that he was doing so, Trump was using a self-serving definition of “new jobs” that sharply reduced Biden’s total – and the “2.1 million” figure is much too low even going by Trump’s own definition.
Through July, the 30th full month of Biden’s presidency, the US economy had added more than 13.4 million total nonfarm jobs under Biden, going from just under 143 million to more than 156 million. So where did Trump get the claim that just 2.1 million new jobs were created during that period? PolitiFact reported in August that Trump’s campaign explained that they were not crediting Biden for the first roughly 11 million jobs added during the Biden presidency. The campaign claimed that those jobs were not newly created, merely returned from the pandemic, and only brought the country back to pre-pandemic Trump levels.
But even if you accept the argument that Biden deserves zero credit for millions of jobs being added under his watch – and a variety of economists who spoke to PolitiFact rejected the argument – Trump subtracted far too many jobs from Biden’s column.
When Biden took office in January 2021, the economy was about 9.4 million jobs below the pre-pandemic peak set in February 2020. By adding more than 13.4 million jobs over Biden’s first 30 full months, therefore, the country went roughly 4 million jobs above the pre-pandemic peak. In other words, Trump’s claim that just 2.1 million new jobs were created in Biden’s first 30 months is wrong even by his own definition of “new jobs.”
And Trump was deceptive by omission in failing to explain that he was excluding most Biden-era job gains by using that unconventional definition. People can come to their own conclusions about whether the definition is fair, but when Trump doesn’t even explain that he is using it, he leaves open the impression that far more jobs were created in his own first 30 months than in Biden’s. The reality is the opposite.”
NEW JOBS!
U.S. payrolls rose 199,000 in November, unemployment rate falls to 3.7%
“KEY POINTS
- Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 199,000 in November, slightly better than the 190,000 Dow Jones estimate and ahead of the October gain of 150,000.
- The unemployment rate declined to 3.7%, compared with the forecast for 3.9%, as the labor force participation rate edged higher.
- Average hourly earnings, a key inflation indicator, increased by 0.4% for the month and 4% from a year ago, close to expectations.
- Health care was the biggest growth industry, adding 77,000. Other big gainers included government (49,000), manufacturing (28,000), and leisure and hospitality (40,000).”
Trump to leave office with the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover
Question #2
Lowered unemployment from 7.8% to 4.7%, a 3.1% difference?
a) Obama
b) Trump
c) Biden
Timer – 30 seconds – answer below:
Answer: A – Obama – Primary Source –https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
Obama lowered unemployment far more than Trump did.
Question #3
Lowered unemployment from 6.3% to 3.7%? A 2.6% difference.
a) Obama
b) Trump
c) Biden
Timer – 30 seconds – answer below:
Answer: C – Biden – Primary Source – https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 Biden lowered unemployment far more than Trump did. Trump inherited 4.7% and left with 6.3%
From Daniel Dale’s Fact Checking:
“The unemployment rate
Trump rejected the legitimacy of the unemployment rate under Biden – as he regularly did before he was elected in 2016 but stopped doing upon entering the White House.
Trump claimed on Friday that, while he was president, “Everybody had jobs, everybody was happy. Now you’re given phony numbers, because far fewer people are looking for jobs. So they throw around – although it just went up – but they throw around ‘3.5, 3.6, 3.7%’ – but it’s a different group of people. They’re looking for jobs, but many of ‘em aren’t looking for jobs, so it’s a fake number.”
Facts First: Trump made two false claims here. First, his assertion that “everybody had jobs” when he was president is, clearly, inaccurate hyperbole; the unemployment rate was 6.3% when he left office in January 2021 and 3.5% even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020. And it’s entirely baseless to say that the current unemployment rate, 3.8% for August, is “fake.” While the unemployment rate always has limitations in explaining the state of the labor market – which is why the federal government collects and releases numerous other employment-related figures – the unemployment rate is no less legitimate now than it was when Trump was in office and repeatedly touting the unemployment rate with no caveats.“
Question #4
Is Inflation a Biden created problem or a global issue?
a) Biden
b) Global
Timer – 30 seconds – answer below:
Answer: B – Global Problem – The World has experience inflation post-covid
Primary Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate-
122 Countries have a higher inflation rate than the United States. We rank 123rd out of 186 Countries.
Daniel Dale’s Fact Checking:
“Inflation under Biden
Trump claimed, “We are a nation that has the highest inflation in 50 years.”
Facts First: This claim is wrong in two ways. First, even when the inflation rate hit its Biden-era peak in June 2022, that 9.1% rate was the highest since 1981 – between 40 and 41 years prior, not “50 years” or “over 50 years” as Trump has claimed. (He has a longstanding habit of exaggerating even figures that would be helpful for him if he cited them correctly.) Second, Trump’s present-tense “has” is no longer accurate. Inflation has declined sharply since the June 2022 peak, and the most recent available rate at the time he spoke, for July 2023, was 3.2% – a rate that, the Biden presidency aside, was exceeded as recently as 2011, far less than 50 years ago. (The August 2023 rate, released after Trump spoke, was 3.7%, which was also exceeded as recently as 2011.)
It is debatable how much Biden was responsible for June’s four-decade high, just as it is debatable how much he was responsible for the subsequent decline. The inflation of the Biden era has been an international phenomenon, affected by factors ranging from pandemic-related supply chain issues to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Question #5
GDP Growth Rate Quarters of 5.2% and 4.7%?
a) Obama
b) Trump
c) Biden
Timer – 30 seconds – answer below:
Answer: A – Obama – Primary Source – https://www.statista.com/statistics/188185/percent-change-from-preceding-period-in-real-gdp-in-the-us/
Question #6
Highest months of quarterly GDP Growth of 4.1% and a 35.3% after a -29.7% quarter?
a) Obama
b) Trump
c) Biden
Timer – 30 seconds – answer below:
Answer: B – Trump – Primary Source – https://www.statista.com/statistics/188185/percent-change-from-preceding-period-in-real-gdp-in-the-us/
How GDP Growth Under Trump Compares To Clinton, Obama And Other Presidents
“In his eight years in office, U.S. GDP growth averaged 1.62% under Obama, about 70% higher than Trump’s growth rate.”
Question #7
Highest months of quarterly GDP Growth of 6.3%, 7%, 7% and 4.9%?
a) Obama
b) Trump
c) Biden
Timer – 30 seconds – answer below:
Answer: C – Biden – Primary Source – https://www.statista.com/statistics/188185/percent-change-from-preceding-period-in-real-gdp-in-the-us/
The Trump vs. Biden Economy: A Comparison in 11 Charts
“Updated June 12, 2023 / Original June 9, 2023”
“Trump pledged during his 2016 presidential campaign that he would be able to return the U.S. economy to 4% annual growth. But he hit that target in only two quarters: the fourth quarter of 2017 and the third quarter of 2020, when the U.S. economy was first reopening and recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
From the first quarter of 2017 to the first quarter of 2019, growth in real GDP (adjusted for inflation) averaged 2.5% per quarter. That’s a healthy level for a huge and diverse economy that generally sees growth of 2% to 3% each year, but it is far from the levels that Trump had been promising, and on par with growth rates at the end of Obama’s second term.
Biden oversaw soaring economic growth in his first year in office as federal stimulus money flowed to counter the pandemic’s economic effect. Growth in two of his first four quarters hit a 7% annual rate. Inflation came to bite in his second year in office, however, and growth turned negative for the first half of 2022.
Even so, Biden has overseen a faster rate of growth, on average, than Trump. From the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2023, the most recent period for which data are available, economic growth under the Biden administration averaged 3.1% per quarter.”
Last Quarter?
Gross Domestic Product, Third Quarter 2023
(Advance Estimate)
“Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter of
2023 (table 1), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the
second quarter, real GDP increased 2.1 percent.”
Trump’s higher other than one anomaly from Covid was 4.1%
A twitter friend creates great twitter threads:
Question #8
How did Donald Trump keep these nine 2016 campaign promises??
The answer is:
The Numbers:
THIS:
The CHIPS Act and the Infrastructure Bill:
A Primary Source: (Don’t read this yet if you want to take the quiz – it contains spoilers – I will be using it throughout the quiz)
Fact check: Debunking eight Trump false claims about the Biden-era economy
They had Four Years to Make America Great Again
