Trump And Hot Air, Both Literal And Figurative
Trump Boasts Of Economic Milestone He Reached That No One Else Has In 100 Years (Except It’s Not True)
But the last time the unemployment rate was lower than the GDP was actually 10 years ago. Just before the economy melted down. A decade, not a century.
Not to mention the fact that it’s a completely apples to oranges comparison, since economic growth and unemployment are not in competition with each other.
Still, both are signs of a robust economy, something Trump’s taking great pains to take all the credit for (“if the Democrats had won the election in 2016, GDP…would’ve been minus 4%”) ahead of the midterm elections.
In an increasingly rare White House media briefing, the President’s Chief Economist, Kevin Hassett theorizes about what could’ve caused the President’s “mis-Tweet”. He explains it away by asserting somebody probably mistakenly added a “0”, turning 10 years into 100 years, and the President was so taken with that number he just ran with it. (In this sense, the President’s Tweet kind of backfired, because Hassett showed up with some great charts and graphs about how well the economy is doing under Trump and all most people in the media were focused on was the one wildly errant Tweet). Click on the photo to watch the clip:
What we believe is a far more likely scenario, is that the “error” was not an error at all, and originated with the President himself, who simply decided that “100 years” sounds a lot better than “10 years”. We’d put money on that explanation.
Do we have proof? It’s in Trump’s book:
“The way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.”
Also there’s the fact that the original Tweet, complete with the “error”, is still in his Twitter feed, and still says “100 years.”
Meanwhile, Trump Administration Poised To Move To Further Deregulate Greenhouse Gas Emissions
It’s methane this go-round. The New York Times reports the Trump Administration will soon propose making it a lot easier for energy companies to release methane gas into the atmosphere, by not making them monitor and repair methane leaks as strictly as they’re required to now.
Methane currently accounts for about 20% of the negative effects of greenhouse gasses on the planet, and was a main focus of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which Trump pulled the U.S. out of long ago.
