Flanked by his top advisors and the CEOs who are members of his “business advisory council”, Donald Trump claimed “We’ve created over 600,000 jobs already over a very short period of time and it’s going to really start catching on now.” His advisors should have known better.
Only 317,000 jobs have been created since Trump took office. Not only must Trump be taking credit for jobs created while Obama was still president, most economists would agree that many (if not most) of the jobs created in the first few months of Trump’s presidency were due to the policies of the Obama administration. Indeed, of the jobs created, 219,000 were created in February, the first full month Trump was president, and 98,000 were created in March. So the number of jobs created is actually going down (not “catching on now”). I also want to point out that companies don’t just decide to hire a bunch of people and those people magically show up and start working. It take time to hire people, and even more time to create projects that can (later) hire people.
But reality doesn’t seem to be important to Donald Trump. Later the same day in a press conference, Trump made the bizarre statement “Already we’ve created more than almost 600,000 jobs.”
The White House later explained that Trump was including all the jobs created in January, but that number was 216,000. So the total for the three months is 533,000, which is still far short of 600,000 (let alone “over”). And Trump was only president for 11 full days in January (11.5 if you include his inauguration day once he was sworn in).
Even if we give Trump credit for all the jobs created since he became president (which is dubious at best) that still means that, on average, 178,000 jobs per month were added during Trump’s presidency. That is still less than the 187,000 jobs that were added (again, on average) while Obama was president (and that includes the jobs that were lost due to the Bush recession after Obama was inaugurated.
Any way you look at it, Trump’s (repeated) statement is a complete fabrication. Why his business advisors and CEOs sat there while Trump said it is beyond me. Either they are idiots or they are happy to endorse blatant lies.
One Comment
They are ass kissers, not advisors. They are also probably afraid of his wrath. He does not take lightly, anyone who disabuses him of his fanciful ideas. The man has a very evident mental problem and the emperor has no clothes.