Trump's Bungled Twitter The Obama Attack

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In two tweets, President Donald Trump has rebuffed former President Barack Obama for having sided with the economic recovery after the recession. But in doing so, Trump misunderstood the facts:

  • Trump misquoted Obama when he claimed that the former president had said, "President Trump would need a magic wand to reach 4% of GDP." In a public meeting in June 2016, Mr. Trump would need a "magic wand" of those jobs from the past, "such as manufacturing jobs.
  • Trump mistakenly tweeted that "the GDP rate (4.2%) is higher than the unemployment rate (3.9%) for the first time in more than 100 years!" This has actually happened dozens of times.
& # 39; Magic wand & # 39;

The president and former president recently exchanged a few words on the responsibility for the post-recession economic recovery. It began when Obama, in his Sept. 7 remarks in Illinois, said, "Let's just remember when this recovery started."

"I mean I'm glad it's going on, but when you hear about this economic miracle, when the job numbers are out, the monthly jobs and suddenly, the Republicans say it's a miracle," he said. said Obama. "I have to kind of remind them that these numbers are the same as they were in 2015 and 2016."

Three days later, Trump tweeted a quote he claimed a skeptical Obama had made about gross domestic product growth.

We could not find this quote or any quote from Obama using the term "magic wand" to describe Trump's ability to grow the economy by 4%.

We found that Obama had used the term "magic wand" at a "PBS NewsHour" public meeting on June 1, 2016 in Indiana. But Obama was referring to Trump's promise to bring back "some of those jobs from the past." Instead, Obama said the next president should focus on job training for "the jobs that are coming in now."

Obama, June 1st, 2016: The good news is that whole new industries are starting to appear and some manufacturers are coming back to the US because they are starting to realize, "You know what? Energy prices are lower here, workers are better here, it is our biggest market. And so, even though we have left and gone elsewhere, it turns out that it is better to go ahead and build here. "

But for those who have lost their jobs right now because a factory was destroyed in Mexico, it's not going to make you feel better. So we need to make sure that people are trained for the jobs that are coming in now, because some of those jobs from the past are just not going to come back, and when someone says, like the person you just mentioned, for who I'm not going to advertise, that he's going to bring back all those jobs, how are you going to do exactly that? What are you going to do?

There's no answer. He simply says, "Well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal." Well, how – how – how are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is that he has no answer.

In the previous administration, Obama, in 2013, and his vice president, Joe Biden, in 2012, announced an increase in manufacturing jobs during the post-recession period.

In his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama said that American builders have added about 500,000 jobs in the last three years since the end of 2010. That was true, but as we pointed out at the time, the loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector was still clean under Obama.

Since Trump took office, the economy has continued to create jobs. The United States added 348,000 manufacturing jobs from January 2017 to August 2018.

But the United States still has a little over one million fewer jobs compared to the production of the Great Recession in December 2007.

Regarding GDP, Trump's tweet referred to the recent Bureau of Economic Analysis which estimates real GDP grew at an annualized rate of 4.2% in the second quarter of 2018, the largest increase since the third quarter 2014. annualized growth rate of 4.9%.

In a press briefing later in the day, Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said that he did not know if Obama had ever quoted Trump's quotation at the time. former president on Twitter. "I'm not the chairman of the council of Twitter advisors," Hassett said.

The 100-year claim

In another tweet of the same day, Trump also incorrectly asserted: "The GDP rate (4.2%) is higher than the unemployment rate (3.9%) for the first time in more than 100 years! ". stated that the president should have said that it had not happened in 10 years. (In fact, last time 12 years ago.)

The president's tweet caught the attention of Justin Wolfers, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, who did an analysis and found that the president's figures and the unemployment rate were accurate, the president that it was the first time in a century that the quarterly rate of GDP was higher than the unemployment rate.

In two tweetsWolfers listed the 62 times that have occurred since 1948, most recently in the first quarter of 2006. For good measure, Wolfers included a graph superimposing the unemployment rate on quarterly GDP.

Hassett, president of the Council of Economic Advisers of the White House, acknowledged the mistake and said that "what is true is that it is the highest in 10 years, and at some point, [Trump] add a zero to that, and they should not have done it.

"The history of thinking about how mistakes happen is not something I can engage in because, because of what the president said, I do not know the whole chain. of command, "said Hassett.

"You would have to talk to the president about where the numbers came from," Hassett said. "But the correct number is 10 years."

(The tweet still had not been corrected on the president's Twitter feed from our post.)

Regardless of the number, Wolfers tweetedthe comparison of unemployment levels with GDP growth rates is unacceptable.

"The problem is that he compares two different things," Wolfers told us by email. "The temperature in Fahrenheit is bigger today than my shoe size, but that does not make it hot."

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