Obama Policies Fueled Our Economic Boom. Dont Let Trump And His Rich Mans Tax Cut Steal The Credit

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-policies-fueled-our-economic-boom-dont-let_us_5a414181e4b06cd2bd03dc36

Ian Reifowitz, Contributor
Professor of History at SUNY-Empire State College
Obama Policies Fueled Our Economic Boom. Don’t Let Trump And His Rich Man’s Tax Cut Steal The Credit
12/25/2017 01:28 pm ET Updated 17 hours ago


Donald Trump is good at certain things. (Please take a deep breath and don’t throw your mouse or laptop at the wall.) I have not come to praise Mr. Lost The Popular Vote By 2.9 Million. But the truth is the truth—even if the truth is something Trump wouldn’t recognize if it landed right on the dyed bird’s nest that covers his dome. In any case, we must acknowledge that the man has demonstrated the ability to shape the media narrative for his own nefarious purposes.

For example, when the term “fake news” first gained widespread usage during the 2016 campaign, it most often referred to anti-Hillary, pro-Trump stories planted by non-journalists on social media. Trump, however, has over the past year co-opted the term successfully enough so that, for many, it now primarily refers to mainstream journalists’ supposed anti-Trump bias. Similarly, he has sought to control the narrative about the strong performance of the American economy, and last week’s passage of the rich man’s tax cut is going to be a crucial pivot point in that narrative. The mainstream media and the American people simply cannot allow him to control it the way he has controlled the narrative on fake news.

Throughout his time in the White House, Trump has been obsessed with denigrating the accomplishments of Barack Obama (Think: “Obamacare is imploding”—it isn’t, but who knows what will happen next year as a result of Trump’s repeal of the individual mandate and other steps taken to sabotage the health care law). On the economy, this exchange with Fox News talking head Laura Ingraham from last month stands as representative:

INGRAHAM: Look at the economy, are you getting the credit for this economic revival without tax cuts through – yeah, without Obamacare repeal yet, and this is a stunning economic revival in 10 months. TRUMP: One of the greatest in the history of our country, and I’m in here now 10 months, and we are setting record after record, day after day. I think we hit another one today. No, I’m not getting enough credit for it. [Snip] Tax cuts – if we get this through and I think we will – you’re going to see this economy take off like a rocket ship.

“Are you getting enough credit for all the great things you’ve done?” is, apparently, what a real journalist asks a sitting president. To me, it sounds a lot like state-run media in a Soviet-style dictatorship. Between that and the you-know-what-licking “prayers” being offered at recent Cabinet meetings—Mike Pence’s praise for his boss makes Lucius Malfoy’s brownnosing of Lord Voldemort look like amateur hour—our government is drawing closer and closer to that of North Korea, in appearance at least, but unfortunately not in terms of diplomatic relations.

Comparing the economy under Trump and Obama has also been a regular feature in this theater of the absurd.

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-policies-fueled-our-economic-boom-dont-let_us_5a414181e4b06cd2bd03dc36