Opinion | Donald Trump’s Lies, Debunked by Data - The New York Times
Graphics by Aileen Clarke
Mr. Rattner is a contributing Opinion writer. He served as counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.
For more than 90 minutes last week, Donald Trump gave a rambling speech accepting the Republican nomination for president for a third time. He used the opportunity, as well as his June debate with President Biden, to repeat favorite false claims and exaggerations. That Mr. Trump has a proclivity for saying untrue things is well known. But in his latest campaign for the White House, I’ve been struck by what appears to be an escalation in both the frequency of Mr. Trump’s lies and the outrageousness of his distortions.
Now that the uncertainty around Mr. Biden’s candidacy has been resolved, the campaign will begin anew. With Mr. Trump sure to ratchet up his falsehood-laden rhetoric, it’s a good time to review his recent record of dishonesty.
Jobs
Truth: Under Mr. Trump — even excluding the impact of the Covid pandemic — the economy generated an average of 182,000 jobs a month, well below Mr. Biden’s 277,000 a month (excluding his post-pandemic bounce) and Bill Clinton’s 242,000.
Inflation
Truth: Rising food prices are understandably on the minds of many Americans. But not a single item tracked by the government is more than 56 percent more expensive than it was when Mr. Biden took office, while grocery prices overall have gone up 21 percent.
Tax cuts
Lie: “What we did was incredible …. We got the largest tax cut in history.”
Truth: The most analytically valid method for measuring the size of a tax cut is to compare it with the size of the economy at the time. By this standard, the Trump tax package was the eighth largest tax cut in the past century, well behind the cuts that Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama signed into law. (And, of course, Mr. Trump’s tax cuts mostly benefited corporations and the wealthy.)
Debt
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Truth: The national debt grew considerably and at a faster rate each year under Mr. Trump. His tax cut helped drive the annual budget deficit to $1 trillion in 2019 from $680 billion in 2017. Including the impact of the pandemic, the national debt increased to $27.7 trillion from $19.8 trillion during Mr. Trump’s tenure.
Truth: Studies have found that the costs of goods subjected to tariffs increased by roughly the full amount of those tariffs, meaning the costs were passed on to consumers.
Ukraine
Lie: “The European nations together have spent $100 billion, or maybe more than that, less than us.”
Truth: Mr. Trump has this reversed. While the United States and Europe spent roughly similar amounts the year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, their aid continued to grow; ours flatlined as Mr. Biden battled with isolationist Republicans before finally securing a new aid package in April.
Truth: With unemployment having been at or below 4.1 percent for 30 months, we have a shortage of workers, not an excess. The number of employed native-born Americans has not grown meaningfully since 2019, but that’s largely because of retirements, not competition from immigrants.
Crime
Truth: Crime has declined since Mr. Biden’s inauguration. The violent crime rate is now at its lowest point in more than four decades, and property crime is also at its lowest level in many decades.
Presidential rankings
Truth: Presidential greatness may be in the eye of the beholder, but this assertion is laughable. A recent survey of more than 150 current and former members of the presidents and executive politics section of the American Political Science Association put Mr. Trump dead last, behind James Buchanan (tarred with allowing the Civil War to begin) and Andrew Johnson (impeached, like Mr. Trump, and nearly convicted). Mr. Biden was ranked 14th greatest, just above Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan.
Steven Rattner is a contributing Opinion writer and the chairman and chief executive of Willett Advisors. He was a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. @SteveRattner • Facebook