Maddow Blog | As jobs soar under Biden, Trump claims ‘the job numbers are fake’

During Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican faced a dilemma. On the one hand, the economy was relatively healthy at the time, and the unemployment rate was steadily improving in the run-up to Election Day. On the other hand, Trump wanted voters to believe the United States was in the midst of an economic disaster that only he could fix.

The GOP nominee settled on a specific rhetorical strategy to resolve the tension: Trump would simply peddle nonsense and tell the public to believe him, instead of reality. As we discussed at the time, at different points during the campaign, the Republican publicly argued, for example, that the unemployment rate was 20% — or possibly 42% — even as reality pointed to a rate below 5%.

After the election, at a pre-inaugural press conference, Trump declared there are “96 million really wanting a job and they can’t get,” which was ridiculous, even for him. Around the same time, the then-president-elect declared that the unemployment rate was “totally fiction.”

Eight years later, as job growth under another Democratic president soars, the Republican is turning to a familiar message. “The Biden job numbers are fake,” the presumptive GOP nominee told a Wisconsin audience yesterday.

In context, Trump’s message wasn’t exactly the same as the line he peddled eight years ago. This year, he’s not saying the job numbers are fictional, so much as he’s asking voters to believe that President Joe Biden doesn’t deserve credit for the jobs boom that happened after he began implementing his economic agenda.

There are, however, a few problems with this.

First, Biden does, in fact, deserve credit. Hardly anyone expected the U.S. economy to be this strong, for such a sustained period, when the Democratic incumbent was first inaugurated, but the White House’s economic agenda has produced impressive results. Indeed, the United States has seen the strongest post-pandemic economic recovery on the planet thanks in large part to the success of Biden’s policies.

Second, there was a contradiction at the heart of Trump’s argument yesterday. On the one hand, he said the economy looked good, but Biden shouldn’t get the credit. A minute later, Trump said the economy is a “bust,” and Biden should get the blame. It can’t be both.

And finally, the former president has also spent recent months claiming that he deserves credit for Biden-era economic progress — which appears to be the same progress Trump wants voters to believe isn’t real.

All of this is every bit as incoherent as it sounds, which is far from ideal given that the economy tends to be the top issue for much of the electorate.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com