President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

That's only partially true, at best.

GDP growth has indeed been impressive under Trump. His first three quarters – giving him full "credit" for the 1stQ of 2017 even though he wasn't in office the whole period – were, in current dollars (i.e. not inflation-adjusted):

1Q 2017: 4.00%
2Q 2017: 3.84%
3Q 2017: 4.12%

The 4th Q isn't in the books officially yet, but let's give him the most recent (upwardly revised) estimate I saw in a quick search:

4Q 2017: 3.98%

Very good growth, no question. So far the average is 3.99%, compared to 3.01% for Obama. Though for context's sake, Obama inherited an economy that was contracting, and it continued to contract for the first three quarters of 2009. You might recall something about a Great Recession. Anyway, those negative numbers really screw up an average. Whereas Trump inherited an economy that was already performing well.

However Obama had 10 of 32 quarters with higher growth than Trump's top figure (4.12%) so far, including five straight quarters from 2Q '14-2ndQ '15. That's 31.3% of the 32 quarters under Obama with higher GDP growth than Trump's best quarterly figure so far.

On real GDP (inflation-adjusted) – which is arguably the more relevant measure – Obama had 13 out of 32 quarters (40.1%) that topped the best quarter so far from Trump. Though again, Trump's average so far is better than the average for the 32 quarters under Obama – 2.17% to 1.52%. (I couldn't quickly find an estimate of real GDP for 4thQ 2017, so it's not part of the average.)

So far, it looks like Trump's a compiler, while Obama had a higher peak. But Trump's got seven more years to make it up. Or does he?

Quarterly GDP, in current dollars
Quarterly real GDP, inflation-adjusted
4th Q 2017 estimate

Apologies in advance if I got any numbers wrong, but I don't think I did.

 

Morning Joe Compares Fox News, Ron Johnson To McCarthy Era

 

Oprah Winfrey: ‘I don’t have the DNA’ for a presidential run

 

I’d point out that that is a cultural thing in a specific region of the world, but I wouldn’t want to give @typefitter a reason to call me racist.

 

Yeah. Trump got NBCUniversal, Disney, and Starbucks to participate in a PR campaign designed to make him, and his tax cuts — which passsed with no democrat votes — look good.

He really is a great deal maker.

 

No. To make their companies look good while doing very little. Cosmetics.

 

Too complicated. Let me boil it down:

Everything bad = The fault of Democrats, and, in particular, Liberals.
Everything good = Thanks to the GOP and, in particular, Conservatives.

 

It is your interpretation of the information that is partisan to the point of being useless, not the information itself, you hypocrite.

 

POPULISTS!

 

What's your shtick other than the opposite?

 

Ridicule the opposite at your peril.

 

At the very least, it seems like you agree: YankeeFan boils all issues down to Conservative Good/Liberal bad.

Could be worse: He could boil all issues down to debates about abortion.