“I’m not blaming anybody, but I’m just telling you I think that the Fed is way off base with what they’re doing, number one. Number two, a positive note, we’re doing very well on trade, we’re doing very well — our companies are very strong. Don’t forget, we’re still up from when I came in, 38 percent or something. You know, it’s a tremendous — it’s not like we’re up — and we’re much stronger. And we’re much more liquid. And the banks are now much more liquid during my tenure. And I’m not doing — I’m not playing by the same rules as Obama. Obama had zero interest to worry about; we’re paying interest, a lot of interest. He wasn’t paying down — we’re talking about $50 billion lots of different times, paying down and knocking out liquidity. Well, Obama didn’t do that. And just so you understand, I’m playing a normalization economy, whereas he’s playing a free economy. It’s easy to make money when you’re paying no interest. It’s easy to make money when you’re not doing any pay-downs, so you can’t — and despite that, the numbers we have are phenomenal numbers.”
— President Trump, in an interview with The Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2018
This long section of President Trump’s Nov. 27 interview with The Washington Post caused a fair amount of puzzlement among our readers. It came in the middle of an attack on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell. The White House declined to answer our questions intended to clarify the president’s words, so we consulted with experts in an effort to deconstruct his rhetoric.
We cannot claim complete success, and it’s fairly amazing the White House would not try to offer an explanation. But perhaps aides do not know what he meant, either. Anyway, here’s a tour through his spin, bluster and puzzling claims.
View the complete November 29 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.