Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Trump Bluntly Fact-Checked After Claiming Americans 'Never Had It So Good' As When He Was President

Screenshot of Donald Trump
Newsmax

While speaking in North Carolina, the ex-President tried to claim that Americans 'never had it so good' as they did at the end of his term in January of 2021—but critics beg to differ.

Speaking at an event in Asheville, North Carolina, former President Donald Trump tried to claim that Americans "never had it so good" as they did at the end of his term in January of 2021—only to be bluntly fact-checked in the process.

The speech was meant to offer a platform for Trump to discuss his economic proposals but quickly devolved into a typical Trump campaign rally characterized by lies and distortions, this time about the state of the country under his leadership.


Trump claimed:

"It was under President Trump we passed the largest tax cuts in American history, the largest regulation cuts in history. We unleashed American energy and real income surged by more than $4,200 in just a short number of months."
"You never had it so good. Now you’re not doing so well. We had the strongest economy in history. There's never been a country that had an economy like us."
"I have [Vice President Kamala Harris] and [President Joe Biden] an economic miracle and they turned it into an economic nightmare with a nation-wrecking agenda ripped out of Kamala's San Francisco liberal playbook."

You can hear what he said in the video below.

In January 2021—best known as the month when Trump's followers attacked the U.S. Capitol on the false premise the 2020 election had been stolen—the economy was not in the "good" place Trump purports it was.

Supply chain shortages were a fact of life due to COVID-19 disruptions and there were several weeks at the height of the pandemic in spring 2020 when millions of people couldn't find a single roll of toilet paper anywhere, the result at least in part of panic buying as state and local governments issued stay-at-home orders that were largely ignored by Trump's followers.

Well over 1.2 million Americans have died since the COVID-19 pandemic began during Trump's final year in office. Many of these people could have been saved had Trump's administration taken the situation seriously from the start.

In fact, January 2021 marked the deadliest month of the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming over 95,000 lives.

Trump was almost immediately fact-checked.


Of course, there's more about the country's economic condition in January 2021 that Trump did not mention.

In January 2021, just before the conclusion of Trump's term, the Labor Department disclosed that total U.S. employment had plummeted by 140,000 in December, resulting in a total of 142.6 million jobs—approximately 10 million fewer than pre-pandemic levels.

The unemployment rate surged from a 50-year low of 3.5% in February 2020 to 14.8% within two months, with over 22 million people losing their jobs. Although it later decreased to 6.7%, that figure was still 2 percentage points higher than when Trump took office.

In this regard, Trump isn't alone; he is the third consecutive Republican president to leave office with a higher unemployment rate than at the start of his term, following both President George H. W. Bush and President George W. Bush.

Additionally, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a progressive American think tank that analyzes the impact of federal and state government budget policies, the 2017 Trump-era Tax Act was "skewed to the rich," noting that:

"Households with incomes in the top 1 percent will receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for households in the bottom 60 percent."

The organization said in March that the tax cuts were "expensive and eroded the U.S. revenue base," remarking that at this moment there is "simply not enough revenue given the nation’s investment needs and our commitments to Social Security and health coverage."

More from News/2024-election

Alex Cooper singing 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame'
@MBDChicago/Twitter (X)

'Call Her Daddy' Host Alex Cooper Gets Brutally Booed At Wrigley Field After Painfully Off-Key Singing

If there's one thing that all baseball fans can come together about, it's the importance of their traditions—and songs.

In the seventh inning at Wrigley Field during a match between the Cubs and the Cardinals, popular Call Her Daddy podcast host Alex Cooper was invited to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and brought two backup dancers with her.

Keep ReadingShow less
Linda Yaccarino
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

X CEO Resigns Day After AI Chatbot Grok Praised Hitler In Alarming Series Of Antisemitic Tweets

Linda Yaccarino—the former NBC Universal executive who later took the reins at X—stepped down as CEO of billionaire Elon Musk's platform after two years on the job just a day after Grok, the platform's AI chatbot, went on antisemitic rants and openly praised Adolf Hitler.

Grok issued deeply antisemitic responses on Tuesday following a reported software update that encouraged the bot to embrace what developers described as the “politically incorrect.” Taking that directive to heart, Grok responded with a series of disturbing posts that included praise for Hitler and even a statement expressing its aspiration to become a “digital version” of the Nazi leader.

Keep ReadingShow less
Black and white photo of a falling spider.
Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

People Divulge Their 'Rare' Phobias That People Refuse To Believe

I am a SEVERE claustrophobic.

I have struggled with this issue for decades.

Keep ReadingShow less
Ted Cruz
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

'The Onion' Rips Ted Cruz With Brutal Headline After Yet Another Vacation During Texas Disaster

The satirical news site The Onion had social media users cackling with its brutal headline mocking Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz for once again being out of the country when Texas was hit by another deadly natural disaster.

Cruz faced considerable national backlash after he flew to Cancún while millions of people went without food and water as a result of the February 2021 Texas power disaster. At least 246 people were killed directly or indirectly; some estimates suggested as many as 702 people were killed as a result of the crisis.

Keep ReadingShow less
Elon Musk and Grimes
Kevin Tachman/Getty Images for Vogue

Elon Musk's Ex Grimes Calls X Platform A 'Poison' And 'Theatre' After Social Media Hiatus

Claire Boucher—who performs and creates under her stage name Grimes, but prefers her birth name or just "C" offstage—recently returned to her musical persona's social media accounts after taking a hiatus for her own well-being.

Once extremely active, she noted on X in April:

Keep ReadingShow less