Thread by @TheValuesVoter

Last Sunday Morning, I saw a GOP Senator go on TV and defend his decision to not suspend the #DebtCeiling. When he was asked why debt bothers him now but didn't bother him when Trump was President, he mentioned that Trump brought "the best economy of my lifetime."

And so ...

I've pointed out many times that this "best economy" claim is not only false but nowhere near true and I've provided data to debunk it. But since it was raised in conjunction with a defense of not raising our debt limit to avoid a default, I got mad and started number crunching.

So this chart represents GDP growth per quarter - a key measure of the economy - for every quarter of every Presidential term since 1949, including Biden's term to date.

The thick green line is Trump. The thick blue line is Biden to date. All the other lines are everyone else.

The place where the thick green line, representing US GDP quarterly growth during Trump's term, dips way low is in Q2 2020, when the pandemic hit. The big spike is was a good quarter that followed in Q3 2020 followed by a more normal Q4 2020. But it's mostly just average.

Now someone who gets all of their information by listening to Fox News, OAN, Newsmax or by listening to their friendly neighborhood GOP Congressman will say "but Trump had the best GDP before COVID messed things up. You'll see!"

Yeah. About that ...

If you look at GDP growth prior to COVID by just looking at the first 12 quarters of every Presidential term, before the giant dip, you'll see Trump's thick green line in better context. Again, it's just average.

Trump saw a median quarterly GDP growth of 2.6% (both before and after the pandemic, actually). By contrast, Clinton saw a 3.95% median quarterly GDP in his second term and 3.2% in his first term. George H.W. Bush had 3.05%. Reagan had 4.4% and 3.7%.

"But what about all the jobs? The guy on Fox said that Trump had the most jobs in the history of since forever!"

This is why you need to look at data, not listen to people who aren't honest with you.

Here's the monthly job graph for every month of every term since 1941.

Just like the GDP chart, you can see when the pandemic hit. It's the big dip followed by the recovery followed by the fall back to earth. You can't tell by looking at this particular graph, but Trump's jobs numbers are also ... average.

So if we look before the pandemic, where we can get a closer look and before the gigantic fall and spike, you can see that Trump's job numbers are pretty much always just average. The thick blue line shows Biden's monthly jobs numbers to date as well.

So the GOP Senators, when pressed for answers about why debt bothers them a lot when the President is a Democrat but not at all when the President is a Republican and especially when that President might send out a mean tweet or a press release, might say "but the economy!"

But the reality is that the economy under Trump cannot be called the "best ever," the "best in my lifetime" or anything close to that. It's just not.

Just be honest. You only care about debt when the other party accumulates it.

You can find all the data to verify what I'm saying here at the two following places:

bea.gov (Gross Domestic Product/GDP data)
bls.gov (Monthly Job Reports)

Another fact: of all the four-year Presidential terms since 1949 (there have been 19 of them), Trump’s term was one of only four in which there weren’t at least 2 quarters of GDP growth greater than 4.5%.

Never got more than 1 quarter of greater than 4.5% GDP in a Presidential term:

Bush (1989-93)
Bush (2005-09)
Obama (2009-13)
Trump (2017-21)