Fox News guest fact-checked on 'thriving' Trump economy claim: ‘Couldn’t get toilet paper'
A Fox News contributor who championed former President Donald Trump’s “thriving economy” received a brutal fact check from Americans who remember March 2020.
Dr. Janette Nesheiwat appeared on “Outnumbered” Thursday afternoon to paint a bright picture of the American economy under Trump, the candidate she’d like to see win again in 2024.
“Under Trump we had a thriving economy,” Nesheiwat said. “You could fill up your gas tank and go for a movie.”
When video of this statement hit X, users who remembered the coronavirus pandemic wanted a word with Nesheiwat.
“We couldn't go to movies,” slapped back X user Colette Flanigan. “Everything was closed because of quarantine.”
They also noted Nesheiwat’s argument — that Trump’s economy surpassed President Joe Biden’s — contradicts an analysis from another Fox News correspondent earlier this week.
Jessica Tarlov defended “the indefensible” Biden in 20 seconds, rattling off positive economic ratings that include an “unheard-of” Gross Domestic Product increase, drops in grocery prices and increased economic confidence among Americans.
For comparison, here’s what a 2021 ABC analysis of Trump’s economic legacy found:
Unemployment reached a historic low of 3.5 percent during Trump’s administration but skyrocketed to 14.7 during the pandemic. The rate upon Trump’s departure was 6.7 percent, well above the 4.8 percent rate he inherited from former President Barack Obama.
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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of December 2017 reduced the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, which Jeffrey Frankel, a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School, told ABC News was effectively “giving trillions of dollars away to the wealthy.”
The timing proved poor in 2020 when Congress issued two Coronavirus aid packages of $2.2 trillion and $900 billion, the report notes. The national debt ballooned to more than $7 trillion, which ProPublica wrote in 2021 would “weigh down the economy for years.”
The U.S. economy also suffered through the trade war Trump instigated with China in 2018, according to ABC News’ analysis. Trump’s tariffs were met with retaliatory Chinese tariffs that ultimately resulted in a larger trade deficit, increased prices on imported goods worldwide, nearly 300,000 jobs lost (according to Moody’s), and a $1.7 trillion loss in stock value of U.S. firms.
The stock market rose under Trump’s administration, ABC notes, but economists said the benefit was felt most by wealthy Americans and the credit largely went to the Federal Reserve, which functions independently of the White House.
These complicated economic analyses were put in blunter terms Thursday on X.
“Trump inherited a thriving economy from Obama,” EssenViews wrote, “and he screwed it all up.”
“Funny how they conveniently forget about when the economy tanked, millions lost their jobs and many hundreds of thousands died," said @firedup79, "because Trump refused to take covid seriously."
“During the summer/winter of 2020, you literally couldn’t fill your gas tank or go to a movie because there were gas supply delivery shortages and the movie theaters were shutdown,” replied @tklane.
Added Mrs. Betty Bowers, “We couldn't even find toilet paper.”