Fox News' attempt to make Donald Trump's first 100 days in the White House look better than President Obama's backfired bigly on the "fair and balanced" network.
Jobless rate after first 3 months: Trump vs. Obama vs. Bush vs. Clinton. pic.twitter.com/EUTEseJyTj
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 29, 2017
Jobless rate after first 3 months: Trump vs. Obama vs. Bush vs. Clinton. pic.twitter.com/EUTEseJyTj
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 29, 2017
Jobs added during first 2 months - Trump vs. Obama vs. Bush vs. Clinton. pic.twitter.com/W7AXoDerVu
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 29, 2017
First 100 days GDP - Real economic growth after first 3 months: Trump vs. Obama vs. Bush vs. Clinton. pic.twitter.com/YYehhSsBxH
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 29, 2017
As Raw Story explained, Fox's graphics did not take into account, nor did they report, that Obama took office during the recession of 2009 and began his first term with an unemployment rate of 7.8%. The real story is that Trump was handed an unemployment rate of 4.8% when Obama left office and his first quarter GDP growth in 2017 has actually been the weakest of the last four years.
Let's just say Twitter did not react kindly to Fox's deception.
The Clinton presidency started on the heels of the 1991-1992 recession under HW Bush, and saw the economy take off due to internet expansion and its effects. The Obama presidency started in the depths of the W recession, which would have plunged the country into a full depression if the GOP had had their way. And if the GOP had actually worked with President Obama rather than obstructing every single thing he did, the economy would have recovered a lot more quickly. But it had been their goal to mire him down and keep anything from improving, which would have allowed the Right to campaign on how Obama wasn’t making things any better. Of course, even after the economy improved, the Right campaigned on the bad news notion anyway – figuring their loyalists would believe Fox News and not their lying eyes.
In the current day, the Pence White House is obviously bent on doing as much damage as it can, in the name of appeasing the Far Right and creating a completely alternate version of reality. The actions Pence is taking may well cause major problems in the economy, particularly in terms of health care once Pence removes the subsidies from ACA insurers and crashes the system. The Dems are now doing anything they can to stop these guys, not in the name of trying to crash the economy as the GOP attempted 8 years ago, but in the name of stopping the GOP from crashing it now.
I’d say these first 100 days are a good microcosm of what we will see over the next 3 3/4 years – many more sneaky backroom orders from Pence, many more blustering tweets from Trump, many more court orders stopping Pence’s wilder ideas, many more deportations, and total gridlock in the Congress – leading potentially to stagnation and uncertainty in the economy. Leading then to even greater anger throughout the country and paving the way for the next president to need to clean up a large mess in 2021 when Trump and Pence are emphatically shown the door. I’ll be curious to see how Fox News will play that story…