Refusing to Buy Trump's Economic Lies

His increasingly transparent BS isn’t working as Americans struggle to make ends meet

Fewer and fewer people are buying what Trump’s selling. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

This is not simply a story about Donald Trump lying. Telling you that Donald Trump is lying is like sharing the news that the sky is blue. You know that. After all, The Washington Post documented over 30,000 lies during Trump’s first term and he hasn’t slowed down since then.

Rather, this is a story about over-the-top lies that used to land—that used to succeed by dazzling, overwhelming or sufficiently confusing people—but are no longer working. In part, that may come from general Trump fatigue, exacerbated in recent days by his cover-up of the Epstein files. But more important, the lies are butting up against the economic realities that people can see and feel. That makes them harder to swallow.

Trump’s latest attempt to manipulate reality came this week during his lavish reception for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Most of the coverage of the prince’s visit to Trump’s bordello-style Oval Office, including my own, focused on the two men’s disgraceful dismissal of the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

But the ludicrous way Trump boasted about the American economy—which surely can be described as uncertain, if not precarious—makes the gap between fantasy and reality painfully clear. (You can read the transcript here.)

Wild claims and repetitive lies

He insisted two times that the U.S. economy is “the hottest country in the world.” It’s not the first time he’s repeated this ridiculous claim. At the United Nations in September, he not only said the same thing but also said that “there is no other country that is even close.”

If Trump had simply done nothing after inheriting an economy from President Joe Biden that The Economist described as “the envy of the world,” he might have been right. Instead, he has pursued moronic tariff policies, damaged the agriculture industry by terrorizing immigrant laborers, poisoned higher education that benefits from international students and ignored the harmful impacts of his reckless policies on inflation and consumer prices.

He asserted seven times that $21 trillion will be invested in the U.S. and, after nine months in office, that investment is already “up to almost $18 trillion.” Even Trump knew it was nonsense when he said, “We’re going to be $21 trillion for one year. I think that’s hard to believe.”

Indeed, it is, given that the gross domestic product of the U.S.—that is, the total value of goods and services produced each year—is just over $30 trillion. The total foreign direct investment in the U.S. in 2024 was $5.7 trillion. Donald Trump can strong-arm foreign leaders to make wild claims to try and satisfy him, but that doesn’t make those claims come true. The Saudis’ Public Investment Fund, typically used for such investments, doesn’t even have a trillion dollars in assets and is reportedly low on cash.

He spewed two times that America experienced “the worst inflation in the history of our country” during the Biden administration. Indeed, it hit 7 percent in 2021 as the country was emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic and 6.5 percent in 2022, but by 2024 inflation had dropped to 2.9 percent.

A cursory review of the history of inflation underscores what a load of nonsense Trump was spewing. Even if we were to put aside the WWII-era inflation rates—9.9 percent in 1941 during the defense spending ramp-up and 18.1 percent in 1946 as a result of unleashed consumer demand and post-war supply shortages—it would still be clear that Trump is clueless about our economic history.

He lived through the inflation of the 1970s when he was in his late twenties and early thirties. Inflation rose to 8.7 percent in 1973, rose to 12.3 percent in 1974 and slowed for several years before hitting 13.3 percent in 1979 and 12.5 percent in 1980. Anyone who sought a mortgage in that period or tried to finance new construction—as Trump surely did—couldn’t forget the high cost of obtaining a loan.

Trump also said that he’s bringing down prices “very, very substantially.” Uh-huh. In fact, more than half of all Americans say the rising cost of groceries is a major source of stress.

Grocery prices are up 2.7 percent from a year ago and up almost 30 percent from pre-pandemic days. That includes, for example, an annual jump in coffee prices of more than 20 percent, the largest jump since 1997. That includes rising prices for most fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes, lettuce and bananas, all of which are either imported or harvested with immigrant labor—and which have been hurt by Trump’s reckless policies. Overall, consumer prices rose nearly 3 percent this summer.

So much for Trump’s empty promises last August during the campaign: “Starting on day one,” he said during a Montana rally, “we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.”

Trump’s tell on this subject: Last week he cut the tariffs on coffee, beef, bananas and more than 200 other food products. Of course, soon he’ll be touting his success at lowering prices that went up because of his own actions—another problem that he created and will take credit for “fixing.”

What the polls are saying

But this pathological liar—this carnival barker who will say anything to try and manipulate people and pump himself up—repeats these same lies over and over, no matter how ridiculous they sound and how untethered from reality they are.

This is all that Trump knows how to do. But if that worked before—well enough to get him re-elected with the lie that he could and would improve the economy—the polling indicates that Americans are not buying his bullshit anymore. They are increasingly clear on who’s been delivering plenty of fake news.

You might recall that Trump spewed this nonsense during his Republican National Convention speech last July: “Incomes will skyrocket, inflation will vanish completely, jobs will come roaring back and the middle class will prosper like never, ever before.”

But now voters who believed him are rejecting him. His overall approvals are down 16 percent and, according to an analysis by The Economist, every state in the country has “moved against Mr. Trump” except for Idaho. That includes a drop of more than 30 percent approval on Trump’s handling of inflation and prices, which is the top issue for voters. “No recent president has fallen so low so quickly as Donald Trump,” noted the magazine, adding that the biggest swing was very red Oklahoma from a positive net approval of 27 to minus 7.

And The Economist is not alone. Even a new Fox News poll found that 61 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s economic polices, while 76 percent had a negative view of the economy generally. That’s worse than the 67 percent just a few months back in July. And even while Trump tries to blame Biden for everything, the Fox survey said that three times as many respondents blamed Trump’s policies for the state of the economy.

Meanwhile, an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll completed a week ago found that Democrats have a 14 point advantage (55 percent versus 41 percent) were the midterms held today. And here’s why: Six out of 10 voters blame Republicans and Trump for the government shutdown, while the same number say Trump’s top priority should be lowering prices, far surpassing any other issue.

Instead, Trump incites more violence

Given these numbers, has Trump refocused to work diligently to improve the economy and lower prices, even though he had already “very, very substantially” lowered prices? Fat chance. He has the discipline of a hungry squirrel, and last week he was still calling the affordability issue a “lie” and “a complete con job.”

No, he was busy yesterday attacking a group of concerned Democratic lawmakers as “traitors” because they had encouraged members of the military in a short and compelling video to “ignore illegal orders.” And this wasn’t just Trump’s usual line of hostile complaint: He was inciting violence by insisting that their “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR” is “punishable by DEATH.” He even reposted several posts urging their hanging.

The six Democratic lawmakers who participated in the video—Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan, all of whom served in the military—responded vividly to Trump in a joint statement:

What’s most telling is that the president considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law. Our service members should know that we have their backs as they fulfill their oath to the Constitution and obligation to follow only lawful orders. It is not only the right thing to do, but also our duty…Every American must unite and condemn the President’s calls for our murder and political violence. This is a time for moral clarity.

This is exactly right.

While Donald Trump continues his reckless transgressions against the Constitution and the rule of law and seeks to distract the public with extreme threats and increasingly transparent lies, honorable public servants need to remind our fellow citizens of their duties to their country and the Constitution.

Trump may think he’s winning by lashing out and repeating lie after lie, but the growing rejection of him and his policies will only grow. The truth of this hateful, self-serving con artist becomes clearer every day.

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