

Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans are making every excuse in the book to spin Trump-inspired economic growth as bad. They accuse Trump supporters of “gaslighting” the news all the time, yet they are the ones gaslighting America into believing that the great news about the economy is horrible. Gaslighting is when a person manipulates other people into questioning their own perception of reality. In other words – the recent great economic numbers are catastrophic financial news for middle-class Americans.

The Trump haters are rooting for a depression and they spin great GDP numbers, low unemployment and a general good feeling about the economy as bad news. How many times have you heard a liberal say that “everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts”? Liberals are rewriting the laws of economics to lead the American people to believe that all the fact-based good economic news we hear on a daily basis indicates bad things to come.

The hard left has trotted out the new face of the Democratic Party, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who is pushing socialism. She complained on the July 13 edition of PBS’ “Firing Line” that “unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family." In addition to PolitiFact giving her a well-earned “Pants on Fire” for being so wrong about simple economic theory, she showed that the left will spin good news as bad. The left and its allies in the media will lie about the economy in an attempt to trick the American people into voting for the party of Democratic Socialists this fall.

A Trump-hating Republican has also taken to gaslighting the rosy economic numbers. New York Times columnist David Brooks told a PBS audience on July 30 that his liberal pals in the business community believe that the U.S. is “becoming like this black hole” for investment and that overseas investors “just don’t want to be involved with Trump.” This is a fact-free opinion by the Times’ version of a Republican.

The important fact that socialist Ocasio-Cortez and Never-Trumper Brooks can’t explain away is that the president’s policies have made the American economy great again. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board nailed it a few days ago when they made the case that “for eight years Barack Obama told Americans that inequality was a bigger problem than slow economic growth, that stagnant wages were the fault of the rich, and that government through regulation and politically directed credit could create prosperity. The result was slow growth, and secular stagnation was the intellectual attempt to explain that policy failure.” The fact that deregulation and tax reform served to supercharge risk-taking and investment makes liberals’ heads hurt.

When Brooks claims that the U.S. is a “black hole” for investment, this is a classic example of gaslighting. The WSJ reported that “the [GDP] acceleration has been driven by business investment, which increased 6.3 percent in 2017 and has averaged 9.4 percent in the first half of 2018.” A massive increase in business investment is a fact, yet Brooks uses his emotional hatred of Trump and his small circle of lefty business executives as authority to ignore widely accepted economic numbers. A healthy stock market shows that investors are not fleeing from investments in the U.S. The recently reported GDP number of 4.1 percent for the last quarter shows overall economic strength. Yet, Brooks ignored all of these data points to push a narrative that is false and a provable economic lie.

Ocasio-Cortez claims that “what we have now is this no-holds-barred, wild west, hyper-capitalism” that has led to “the people who create value in our society … not experiencing any of the value they are creating.” Again, this is an example of a person saying what they want to be true – not what is actually true. The Wall Street Journal cited “a sharp increase in the personal savings rate” that was due to “an upward revision in wages and salaries and jumped to 6.7 percent from 3.4 percent for 2017 and averaged 7 percent in the first half of this year.” They calculate that $500 billion more in cash is in the pockets of Americans than previously estimated. Cortez would have a hard time explaining why consumer spending is so strong when nobody has any money to spend.

The gaslighting of the Trump economy has commenced and it will continue through the fall elections. Every bit of good news will be met with spin as to why it is bad news. Brooks' claim that investors would rather invest in China or Africa when they are not investor-friendly areas of the world shows his lack of objectivity. Socialist calls for a higher minimum wage, Medicare-for-all and free college are ideas that belong in the slow-growth Obama years. Time to give credit where credit is due and stop the gaslighting about the economy.

It is a fact that President Donald J. Trump’s policies have made the economy much better than during the Obama years – full stop.