Fact-checking President Trump’s remarks on the economy

It’s been a while since we’ve done a roundup of President Trump’s claims. We usually handle the president’s various gaggle and media availabilities in our database of false and misleading claims. (12,019 and counting!) But, given the attention to the worsening economic news, we thought a roundup of claims made during his press availability with the Romanian president on Aug. 20 would be appropriate. Some of these statements are already in the database; some of them are new. We will keep it focused on the economy except for the last item.

The Federal Reserve “also did quantitative tightening, which was ridiculous. And so — and despite that — you know, if you look — I guess you could call it normalized, but if you look, our economy is doing fantastically, and if you take a look at the previous administration, they weren’t paying interest. They had no interest rates, they had loosening, not tightening, and frankly it’s a big difference.”

Trump consistently appears jealous that the Fed kept interest rates near zero during the Obama administration. Obama, of course, faced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with unemployment reaching 10 percent. The economy is now basically at full employment. Zero percent interest rates would mean the economy was again in a free fall — presumably not something Trump wants.

View the complete August 21 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.