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In one of his more honest moments, Donald Trump on Thursday summed up his campaign strategy like this: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s gonna destroy our country.”
It’s certainly true that, absent any actual policy initiatives that might work or appeal to American voters, Trump and other GOP candidates have primarily run on a platform of fearmongering and gaslighting.
Or, in other words, they have overstated the former president’s achievements and exaggerated the consequences of what would happen if the Democrats win.
The first part of this is classic Trump.
He often talks about having been responsible for “the greatest economy in history,” which is a ludicrous claim, and reminds people that they were better off four years ago.
It is true that Trump was handed a US economy on the upswing and didn’t screw it up. After emerging from the Great Recession, Barack Obama grew the nation’s gross domestic product by an average of 2.3 percent annually over his eight-year term.
This allowed Trump to get off to a good start.
“The economy now is at 3 percent,” he said in 2017. “Nobody thought it would be anywhere close. I think it could go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6 percent, ultimately.”
But those growth rates never materialized (and, to be honest, nobody expected them to because that was just Trump making stuff up). His economy, while doing as well as Obama’s (and that of President Joe Biden), fell short of these goals every year… even without taking into account the pandemic-induced recession of 2020.
Speaking of that pandemic… you know that “better off four years ago” nonsense? Well, four years ago, Americans (and the world) were hunkered down at home, millions of them had lost their jobs, and the country was in shambles.
Sure, Trump can’t be blamed for the pandemic, but that’s really the case in point when it comes to comparing “economies.” There are outside factors that play a major role in macroeconomic developments. A great example is the high level of inflation that is the centerpiece of GOP attacks on Biden (and now Vice President Kamala Harris).
Yes, inflation was undoubtedly high early in Biden’s presidency. This, too, was caused by the pandemic, and it was a global problem and not one limited to the United States. But it is also true that it is easing off now.
Conversely, a lot of the unprecedented job growth under Biden is not necessarily his accomplishment but rather a reflection of Americans getting back to work after the layoffs during the pandemic.
What about the stock market?
On the day before the 2020 election, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 26,925.05. As it became more and more clear that Biden would win, the Dow increased all week and ended up at 28,390.18 on the Friday following the election.
That is a nice growth rate from November 8, 2016, when Trump won the presidency. Back then, the Dow closed at 18,332.74.
In other words, from the day when it became clear that Trump would be president to the day when it became clear that he had been beaten, the Dow was up more than 8,500 points, a growth rate of nearly 50 percent.
However, the Dow has now cleared the 40,000-point barrier for the first time ever, meaning that it has grown by more than 50 percent since Biden won the presidency.
That stands in stark contrast to Trump’s gloomy pre-election predictions.
“You have to vote for me because if you don’t, you’ll be putting in radical lefties, you’ll have a depression, your stocks will be worthless, your 401(k)s will be gone, there’ll be crime all over your streets,” Trump predicted four years ago this month.
None of that came to pass, of course… and that’s part of Trump’s dilemma.
If you keep crying wolf, and no wolf appears but rather a pleasant elderly man who increases your 401(k) by 50 percent, it’s tough to be taken seriously.
That hasn’t stopped Trump from trying.
Here he is offering the same rhetoric and scare tactics last week.
“I think that our country is right now in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint. Both gangs on the street and, frankly, gangs outside of our country in the form of other countries that are, frankly, very powerful,” Trump said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. “We have a lot of bad things coming up. You could end up in a depression of the 1929 variety, which would be a devastating thing. It took many years, took decades to recover from it. And we’re very close to that, and we’re very close to a world war. In my opinion, we’re very close to a world war.”
OK, then.
How crazy Trump sounds when he says stuff like this was hilariously illustrated on Thursday.
As he was talking about the devastation that surely lies ahead if Harris is elected in November, Fox News displayed a ticker at the bottom of its screen that showed the Dow Jones above 40,000 and gaining 500 points Thursday (as the Democratic nominee’s campaign gleefully pointed out, here is the moment when the right-wing propaganda network removes that chyron as Trump ranted on).
How silly this fearmongering seems was also evident earlier this month after a weaker-than-expected jobs report sparked brief fears of a recession.
Stocks in Japan plunged by 12 percent, which sent jitters through global stock markets.
Joyous Republicans, who seem to like rooting against the United States and American investors, called this the “Kamala Crash.”
That certainly sounds serious. However, in the end the “crash” was nothing of the sort. The Dow dropped 2.6 percent to below 39,000 points (and, as you can see from that helpful Fox News chyron, all of these losses have already been recovered).
The crazy thing is that, with less hyperbole, Trump could make a case against Harris centered on inflation. While it would be a bit intellectually dishonest to blame Biden for higher prices, they are still a real thing. There is no denying that the stuff of our daily lives is more expensive now.
But Trump doesn’t have the discipline to launch a measured attack… he has to go all-out and ends up sounding like an insane doom-prophet.
As a result, since neither his previous boasts of success nor his gloomy predictions have come to pass, it will take a massive amount of gaslighting to scare independents into voting for him.
That’s not a winning strategy… and neither is calling Democrats “socialists” and “communists.”
Because, just as Americans know that milk is more expensive now, they also understand that their 401(k)s are doing great.
