Donald Trump has finally accepted responsibility for the economy. He declared last week, “We have the greatest economy actually ever in history.”
“Greatest actually ever” for whom? Certainly, the Trump family and his billionaire pals have had the “greatest” accumulation of wealth in the shortest amount of time during the worst period of corruption the country has ever known.
Some might think Trump’s boast about the economy is among the “greatest” lies Trump has uttered. Sure, the January job numbers, if one is to trust this regime’s figures, showed an increase of 130,000 jobs, but that was not the real news. (Despite Trump’s boasts, construction and manufacturing jobs remained flat. Economist Justin Wolfers pointed out that excluding healthcare and education, the rest of the economy lost 41,000 jobs.)
The real shocker: In 2025, the labor market added only 181,000 jobs, dramatically down from 584,000 previously reported. That’s right, in all of 2025, only 181,000 jobs were created, the worst year for jobs outside true recessions since 2003. Even grading on a curve, that is a “D-” economy. In short, the economy Trump has been boasting about is creating far fewer jobs than it was under President Joe Biden and certainly below the pre-Covid level.
Anticipating the tepid numbers, National Economic Council head Kevin Hassett early last week trotted out to insist we should not worry about cruddy job numbers because our population is shrinking! To be specific, a certain segment of our population is shrinking very fast — namely, immigrant workers who are getting deported by the hundreds of thousands under this administration. Honestly, it is not the “greatest” thing to have a shrinking, aging population, a trend that has crippled other economies, including in Japan.
Everyone from Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller to chief economists in the finance world have been warning that job growth may be dropping. That is not a good thing, let alone the “greatest” thing; the lower the numbers, the more easily the economy can tip into negative job growth.
Texas businesses do not share Trump’s pride in the economy. In the Rio Grande, the business community is reeling from “aggressive immigration enforcement wreaking economic havoc.” Trump-imposed economic chaos delays construction, which means “higher prices for buyers and lower margins for builders,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Some builders said they just hope to break even on delayed projects. Materials suppliers are laying off employees.” Immigration raids reportedly caused one concrete company to file bankruptcy
In addition to the massive deportation scheme, other Trump policies are hobbling the economy. “Uncertainty over tariff policy has made it difficult for many companies to plan ahead, leading them to hold off on hiring,” the Journal reported. “For some — particularly small businesses — tariffs have raised costs, making it more difficult to take on new employees.” (The conservative Tax Foundation reported that Trump’s tariffs “amount to an average tax increase per US household of $1,000 in 2025 and $1,300 in 2026.” That is the biggest tax hike as a percentage of GDP since 1993; it also lowered GDP by .5%.)
As a political matter, Trump might want to stop bragging about an economy the voters think is terrible. Harry Enten observed on CNN, “What we’re dealing with is a Donald Trump message that is not actually meeting the reality.” Trump’s boasts only reinforce the perception that he is proud of making himself and the billionaire class richer and cares nothing about average Americans.
Trump’s atrocious economic approval ratings might be the “greatest” rejection of a president’s economic performance since Herbert Hoover. Even before the most recent job numbers were released, PBS/NPR/Marist polling found that by “a 2-to-1 margin, more Americans say they would like Trump to spend more time prioritizing the economy and lowering the prices of goods than want him to prioritize controlling immigration.” And worse, “The percentage of Americans who disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy has slowly ticked up in his second term. Now, nearly 6 in 10 respondents disapprove — the highest of either of his terms in office and a higher level of disapproval than his predecessor Joe Biden measured at any point during his presidency.” Yikes.
This poll is no outlier. Polling guru G. Elliott Morris looked at polls from Pew, CBS, and Gallup — “all painting the same picture that Americans think the economy is not working for them.” What Trump preens about is exactly what voters find most objectionable. Elliott noted:
Trump won in 2024 mainly because voters were mad about the economy. But a year into his second term, they’re still mad, and they’re mad at him in particular. And the CBS data underscores that economic pessimism isn’t just about prices and sticker shock; a large share of Americans doubt that the whole system works for them anymore. We are living in an era of pronounced anti-system sentiment, tied to perceptions of economic immobility.
No wonder Democrats are leaning into the affordability issue. As Morris put it, “Trump is trying to drag Democrats into a fight about prices and affordability. He won’t win that fight.”
The legacy media might want to confront Trump about what part of the economy causing so many people so much pain is the “greatest actually ever.” (Maybe Trump thinks this is the “greatest” time for the crypto and Silicon Valley moguls who are raking it in after flattering and “contributing” to his gambits such as the faux-Versailles ballroom.) Trump and his MAGA supplicants might want to stop using words like “greatest,” a word that come November may better describe Democrats’ election results.
What did Pam Bondi say about the stock market - over 50,000! Right... who was she talking to? She was talking to the wealthy.
The top 10% of Americans held 93% of all stocks, the highest level ever recorded.
Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks in the third quarter of 2023.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-ownership-wealthiest-americans-one-percent-record-high-economy-2024-1?op=1
I am worried about the mid-terms. We all foresee a "blue tsunami" in November, but his lowness is already showing us that he intends to interfere with our ability to conduct free and fair elections. I am writing to my secretary of state today asking him to refuse to participate in Republican-led efforts to corrupt the outcome of voting, but I don't believe that will be enough to prevent the voter suppression efforts I expect to see. Armed men at voting precincts around the country WILL discourage people from casting ballots. Voter roll purges between now and election day will result in fewer eligible voters and thus fewer ballots cast. There is little we can do to prevent either of these actions, so we need to be thinking ahead about how we intend to counteract them.