Obama Has Been Claiming Credit For Trump’s Economy — Trump Marches Out Economist, With Receipts

President Trump’s administration had a blunt response to Barack Obama taking credit for roaring economic numbers.

President Obama has been taking credit for the historically good economic numbers that are occurring under the Trump administration in a series of speeches around the country. At a speech at the University of Illinois, Obama scoffed at claims that some of the greatest economic numbers in American history are occurring under Trump’s administration.

“When you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let’s just remember when this recovery started,” Obama said. “I’m glad it’s continued but when you hear about this economic miracle that’s been going on, when the job numbers come out, monthly job numbers, suddenly Republicans are saying ‘It’s a miracle.’ I have to remind them — actually, those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015 and 2016.”

In response, the Trump administration marched out Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, to fact-check Obama’s claim during a Monday press briefing. Hassett said, “One of the hypotheses that’s been floating around about the economy lately is that the strong economy that we are seeing is just a continuation of recent trends. You know, since we are the nerds of the White House, we decided this was a testable hypothesis.”

Hassett then began to reveal a series of data charts showing trends during the end of the Obama administration continuing through to Trump’s first two years in office, including small business optimism, nonresidential fixed investment, capital spending, durable goods orders, purchasing manager index and new businesses.

Each slide showed the reversal of the trend line in favor of a better economic data once Trump was elected and the GOP’s economic policies, such as tax cuts, began to take hold.

So I would assert that if you look at their collective body of evidence, the notion of what we are seeing right now is just a continuation of recent trends and it’s not super defensible.

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