Trump invents Obama quote in tweet boasting of economic performance

US president posts video of predecessor showing he did not say what was attributed to him

Donald Trump has attributed a false quote to Barack Obama in a tweet about the US economy.

The president wrote: “’President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP,’ stated President Obama. I guess I have a magic wand, 4.2%, and we will do MUCH better than this! We have just begun.”

But Mr Obama has never said this, and during his presidency GDP exceeded 4.2 per cent on three separate occasions.

Inexplicably, Mr Trump then proved the inaccuracy of the quote by tweeting a video of Mr Obama speaking in June 2016.

Talking about creating more manufacturing jobs in the US, Mr Obama said: “Well, how exactly are you going to do that? What exactly are you going to do? There’s no answer to it," Mr Obama said.

“He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, what, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is, he doesn’t have an answer.”

At no point is Mr Obama heard mentioning GDP.

Earlier Mr Trump described the US economy as “soooo good, perhaps the best in our country’s history”.

US GDP growth hit 4.2 per cent during the second quarter, but analysts have warned that growth is “unsustainable”, and that Mr Trump’s “America First” policies which have seen the escalation of a trade war with China as well as tit-for-tat tariff introductions with the European Union, Mexico and Canada pose a risk to the economy and they expect growth to cool off.