Hillary Clinton today cited the new — supposedly objective — Moody’s Analytics report on Donald Trump’s economic plan to argue his proposals would have catastrophic results.
The Moody’s analysis yesterday claimed Trump’s polices would lead to the loss of 3.5 million jobs. That sounds quite damning.
But Mark Zandi, the lead author, is a huge Hillary donor and Obama cheerleader.
He donated the maximum allowed $2700 to her campaign last year. His detailed six paragraph bio for the report does not mention the donation.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Zandi also “served as an occasional adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and later provided analysis to support the Obama administration’s stimulus and mortgage-restructuring proposals.”
But upon release of his report yesterday, Zandi sounded like he worked for the Hillary campaign’s press office.
“If Mr. Trump gets precisely what he’s proposed, then the U.S. economy will suffer meaningfully,” Zandi alleged. “It will result in a lot of lost jobs, higher unemployment, higher interest rates, lower stock prices.”
In January 2014, Zandi also sounded like a DNC spin artist when the Obama Administration announced that only 74,000 jobs were added to the economy in December.
“I just don’t believe” the numbers, he told an incredulous Chuck Todd. “They were uniformly weak and the number was so low, it’s just not consistent with any of the other economic data that we’re getting. GDP has been a lot stronger — that’s the value of all the things we produce — that’s been growing a lot more strongly. All the surveys have been much stronger, retailing’s been good, vehicle sales — you know, it just doesn’t make any sense, so I’m not paying attention to it at all.”
Hillary cheerleaders are likely to claim Zandi has bi-partisan credentials –despite the contribution — because he also gave money to John McCain in 2008. But that was Zandi’s last donation to any Republican candidate, the Trump press office noted today. He has only supported Democratic congressional campaigns since then.
Meanwhile, Moody’s says its report on Hillary Clinton’s economic policies is forthcoming. Whether upon release it can be differentiated from a campaign press statement is an open question.