Donald Trump has had to contend with unfavorable comparisons to former President Barack Obama in many areas but one area that he can’t seem to account for is this administration’s slower rate of job creation.
In a recent interview, the President was presented with new information on the unemployment rate now versus the unemployment rate under Obama and he went into high defense mode as he tried to explain it away.
In the interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd had some questions for Mr. Trump after the president claimed his economy was “great”. Chuck Todd pointed out, “Your economy is great. I’m not saying it’s not great. But this recovery started and in the 28 months that you’ve been president and the last 28 months of Obama’s presidency, he averaged more new jobs than your first 28.”
Trump’s knee jerk reaction was that Obama started with a “bad base” and had less to do than he did but then he was asked if his jobs numbers were a continuation of the growth catapulted by the previous administration’s work to which he replied, “Yeah, but Chuck, you have to understand, nobody was working. The whole place was a disaster. And I don’t – I’d never take that away.” Okayyyy.
Mr. Trump continued to fumble to explain away Obama’s success, saying, “But it’s very easy — because when that turned around they pumped a tremendous amount of money into the economy… He also had a Federal Reserve person who kept the interest rates low. I don’t. I don’t have that privilege.”
Todd fired back, arguing that Trump does, in fact, have that privilege: “Sounds like you do now. Do you feel like you have sent the threat, your threat to demote him, do you think that’s had an impact?”
Todd was referring to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and the President’s threats to demote him but the president dismissed that notion but still criticized Powell’s performance, saying, “Well, I’d be able to do that if I wanted but I haven’t suggested that. No, no, I have the right to do that. But I haven’t said that. What he’s done is $50 billion a month in quantitative tightening. That’s ridiculous. What he’s done is he raised interest rates too fast.”
When asked if he was concerned that the current interest rates would hurt his re-election chances, he said, “I think the economy’s so strong we’re going to pull through it. But I’m not happy with his actions. No, I don’t think he’s done a good job. I think this, if he didn’t raise rates Obama had very low rates.”
“So Obama was playing with funny money. I wasn’t. I’m playing with the real stuff.”
President Donald Trump
He continued, “Obama had somebody that kept the rates very low. I had somebody that raised the rates very rapidly. Too much. He made a mistake. That’s been proven. And yet my economy is phenomenal. We have now the best economy, maybe in the history of our country.
Trump ludicrously suggested that the economy was ready to collapse under Obama, even after being shown the numbers but still he continued, “One — just to finish off, when I took over, this country, the economy was ready to collapse. You take a look at the numbers. It was ready to collapse.”
Todd wasn’t having it. He pushed Trump on that point, reiterating that the the numbers actually indicated the economy was stronger than the president was implying, saying: “I just showed you the numbers. It was not ready to collapse.”
Trump remained adamant and unwilling to acknowledge the facts: “You showed me unemployment numbers. Excuse me. Take a look at your GDP, take a look at your jobs, take a look at your optimism.
“Take a look at all of the charts. When I took over from election day on, I mean, you show me one chart which, where I did. Take a look at some of the optimism charts and everything else. It went from 57 to 92. Nobody’s ever seen anything like right after I won.”
To the very end, Trump would not concede that Obama’s job rate was higher than his, even when presented with evidence based data and he continued to insist that HE was the cause of any success the economy has seen- just another look into his chronic irrational behavior.
You can watch the entire interview here:
