Donald Trump Jr schooled online over glaring gaffe about US economy

‘It’s wild that literally every metric is objectively better but MAGA prefers to be treated like crap by their cult leaders’

Donald Trump Jr is facing a flood of corrections after he claimed there’s not a “single metric” by which “anyone” is better off now than they were three years ago.

“I can’t think of a single metric where anyone is better off now than they were three years ago… even with Covid,” Mr Trump Jr said in Iowa on Thursday.

Three years ago – January 2021 – was the deadliest month of the pandemic up to that point – around 80,000 people died from complications connected to Covid-19 that month alone.

CDC data shows that in the week ending 9 January 2021, 25,974 deaths were recorded. For the week ending 9 December 2023, that figure was 1,614.

In January 2021, the unemployment rate stood at 6.3 per cent. By last month, that number was 3.7 per cent.

“The record high 25,974 Americans who died from Covid in a single week just before his father left office could not be reached for comment,” @JoJoFromJerz noted on X.

Journalist Aaron Rupar said: “They lie effortlessly and about everything. This one is so silly it doesn’t even need to be debunked for those of us without terminal brain worms.”

“How about, I dunno, the number of people dying… from Covid?” former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan asked.

“Republicans have gotten away with lying about the economy for years now, so now they’re going even further by claiming Trump’s recession economy *during COVID* was better than today’s economy. They think you’re stupid,” progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen wrote.

Journalist John Harwood simply quoted three of Mr Trump Jr’s words: “I can’t think.”

George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences professor Jonathan Reiner wrote: “Here are a few: COVID deaths, [Dow Jones Industrial Average], Unemployment rate, Price of insulin, School closures.”

Co-founder of the progressive outlet MeidasTouch Ben Meiselas said that it’s “wild that literally every metric is objectively better but MAGA prefers to be treated like crap by their cult leaders”.