Last week, Trump tweeted a false statistic on the US's quarterly economic growth and jobless rate. According to Trump, the GDP rate of 4.2% has now exceeded the unemployment rate of 3.9% for the first time in "over 100 years" -- an exaggeration and an inaccurate attempt to magnify his administration's positive contributions. In fact, the last time the GDP exceeded the unemployment rate occurred a mere 12 years ago.
Some credit Trump's error to false information. Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, acknowledges that the mistake could have been due to the accidental addition of a "0" after the number "10" as the occurrence could be said to have been unique over the course of the past decade, when rounding down. Such an occurrence has indeed been rare in recent decades, though it has occurred many times in the past 70 years. Since the US government began monitoring unemployment statistics in the 1940s, this occurrence has been observed 64 times.
Unfortunately for the Trump administration, the President's most recent gaffe merely continues an established pattern. In August, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that Trump had "tripled" Obama's eight-year job creation record for black workers in 18 months. These figures were almost entirely fabricated. Worse still, Huckabee Sanders didn't stop at giving a percentage. She produced specific numbers as well, giving 195,000 as the total number of jobs the Obama administration created for black Americans. This figure stands at a stark contrast with the 3 million jobs for black workers added during Obama's presidency. Furthermore, last week Trump asserted that the stock market had risen almost 50% since his election, when in fact the S&P 500 Index has risen only 35%.
Many Americans balk at the frequent discrepancies between Trump's reportage of the facts and the facts themselves. That said, what's no longer news is the President's usage of Twitter
