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Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story.
Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story.
President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.
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To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!”
he declared on social media last week.
But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.
For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that
murders are way down,
illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and
roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.
Jobs are up,
wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and
near its historic best. Domestic energy production is
higher than it has ever been.
The manufacturing sector
has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush. Drug overdose deaths have
fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned
closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”
Those positive trends were not enough to swing a sour electorate behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, reflecting a substantial gap between what statistics say and what ordinary Americans appear to feel about the state of the country. ..."
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He starts his administration with a straight flush, let's say Queen or maybe Jack high. Does he go for a royal flush or toss out the entire hand dealt to him b/c Biden? Or does he stand pat and claim credit for his inherited hand and reap the benefit of people feeling better about the same facts with a different face of current events?