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How Trump Plans to Manipulate US Economic Data to Gaslight the Public (www.thenation.com)

submitted 1 month ago by just_another_person@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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[-] EvilBit@lemmy.world 67 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

For what it’s worth, you can’t tell people their paychecks are getting bigger when they aren’t. Biden presided over a “great economy” but wages stagnated and buying power decreased. Trump is going to Strangelove-ride this economy into a pit so deep it’ll be hard to convince people that everything is roses.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 29 points 1 month ago

It'll work for a while on some people, but yeah, eventually it'll come crashing all down, especially if companies start using the fake figures into their future planning.

[-] Mirshe@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago

I'm pretty sure this is also why they want to annex Canada, Greenland, and Panama (maybe Mexico if they think they can get away with it). It's the exact same strategy the Nazis used, and I'm not invoking that lightly: when their economy was absolute dogshit, the Nazis made it look WAY better by A) going to a war footing and B) invading other countries and stealing everything that wasn't nailed down (then stealing everything else, including the nails.)

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[-] prole 21 points 1 month ago

TBF Trump did exactly this in his first term when he changed the withholding to make people think their taxes went down, when in reality they ended up paying the same or more when they filed.

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[-] JiveTurkey@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

And that's why trickle down is always a scam.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Yet this is all so politically driven.

For example, there were many minimum wage hikes during Biden’s term, lifting the lowest wages. At the state level. In blue states. Politicians in the states that needed this most blocked both federal increases and those for their own states. How are those politicians not the ones getting the blame?

As another example, legislation signed by Biden resulted in many additional business benefits in factories and trades. This would have created many new jobs, especially in some of the most low wage parts of the country. But not until the factories are built. And political changes where the government won’t follow through with its commitments means many of these will no longer be built. Why isn’t the administration stopping these new jobs getting the blame?

[-] EvilBit@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

A huge difference between the left and the right is that the left respects the citizens and gives them the benefit of the doubt on how much they understand and consider. The right doesn’t overestimate them and accurately reckons and takes full advantage of their reactive, unanalytical character.

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[-] Podunk@lemmy.world 43 points 1 month ago

Trump doesnt need to manipulate much. I live in deep red country. They are upset that fox has "completely changed" and they want to go to newsmax instead.

They are soooo fucking close to getting it. But the propaganda seed has already been planted.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago

That is not the insight you think it is. Newsmax is the successor to Fox. What you're saying is they want to bury their heads even deeper into the fascist propaganda machine.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Seth Meyers:

Newsmax, if you're not familiar, is if Fox News had a crazy uncle.

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[-] medicsofanarchy@lemmy.world 41 points 1 month ago

"With Sleepy Joe Biden, nobody had cardboard, it was so hard to get, terrible economy, everybody said so, even the Democrats. Now you look around this great nation of ours, under my plan, everybody has cardboard. Everybody. Look at any sidewalk, every person has a big piece of cardboard they can write on. Everybody is willing to work, it says so on the cardboard that everybody can get now."

[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 39 points 1 month ago

People are still gonna notice that they can't afford groceries.

[-] Otter@lemm.ee 18 points 1 month ago

Are they though? "Idiot Biden, sleepy Joe as they say, left us a terrible economy, terrible, this is the worst economy we've ever seen. Poor America. But I have very bright minds, the smartest minds, hard at work on it. To fix the economy, we're gonna make it all better."

[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

trumpers can blame biden all they want. You can't deny an empty belly, and if the president is saying everything is great while the evidence to the contrary is literally visceral, that's not gonna work for long. Just look at how well doing that exact thing worked out for biden and harris.

I suspect that trump will try it anyway and once it fails, he'll pick the next entry on the "then they came for" list and start blaming them.

[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 month ago

But want the economy doing good under Biden? Sure you had inflation but at a much lower scale then most of the world. I don't get why you think it was bad? Or am I missing something.

[-] DrFistington@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

Most people are too stupid to realize that the economy is like a massive cargo ship, it was on a course set by Trump when Biden got elected, and it took nearly 4 years for Biden to change course. Now that's just the first step. You have to then wait for the ship to get out of the storm and reach it's destination, which is where the disconnect lays. We're all still seeing the storm and feeling the rain, and the ship bobbing in huge waves, and Biden was telling us that everything was getting better. He wasn't wrong People just don't realize how long it takes to get out of the storm even after the course has been corrected.

Date Rape Donny on the other hand is steering us straight into the storm, while telling us it doesn't exist

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

For changes in the economy like those, you really need a two term president: one term to lay the groundwork and the second to “stay the course” to reap the benefits.

This is also where Harris’ response of not wanting to change anything is the best choice. She would have seen the benefits and received credit for Biden’s groundwork.

Its difficult to get this across, especially since so many voters don’t have the respective or patience to look beyond immediate needs

[-] Jhuskindle@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

I am so refreshed being here. I hate Trump. But bidens magical economy was not reality, myself and many of my circle all in very high demand sectors spent longer unemployed than any other time in history. People were hungry and unable to pay bills. Who was benefitting from his economy? Only the ultra wealthy. I just don't see it. And I feel gaslit when people say bidens economy was so good. Trumps is worse of course but we haven't even reached a minimum.

[-] swwans183@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Record unemployment though! *huge percent of which were part-time jobs that did not pay a living wage

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 month ago

Depends on how you define the economy. The economy won't be good in the eyes of the average person until there has been a huge redistribution of wealth back to lower classes.

[-] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago

And that won't happen under an oligarchy, because Trickle Down economics is a lie.

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[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

"You're not suffering! There are other places that have it worse!" is messaging bereft of empathy.

Better messaging would be to admit the economy sucks, making no excuses but without unnecessarily accepting blame, and put forth a vision forward. Denying the obvious is just an admission of not being up to the task.

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[-] angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 9 points 1 month ago

The problem with the Biden economy was that the conventional economic measures were good, but groceries still went up. Effectively, this already didn't work for Biden, even though Biden technically wasn't lying.

[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It became evident how out of touch biden and then later harris were.

EDIT: extraneous "how"

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I'm pretty sure you were not necessarily quoting him directly, but I would point out that he and his apparatchiks have literally said such things, including how Biden's economy, which was by objective measurements (yeah, I know they are imperfect) the "envy of the world, was AXETUALLY the "worst" economy ever.

Which is just such ridiculous nonsense. Meanwhile, donvict takes actions that have consequences, one of which is crashing the economy and they expect us to sit there and believe such nonsense? I know a lot of idiots won't even bother to look it up, even if it's just a graph of the S&P, but holy shit, that is some next-level, Orwellian-type brazen lying.

[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

They convinced enough people that crime was rampant because of illegals when crime was down and immigrants (illegal or legal) are less likely to commit crimes.

[-] DrFistington@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago

Dude just wiped billions of the economy, and he still thinks he's going to be alive next year. Honestly, Russia got what they needed out of him. Just just a liability for them at this point

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago

Trillions. There's an article that hit my feed that shows that the NYSE and DJ indexes have lost 5 trillion dollars in value in the last 3 weeks.

[-] CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al 3 points 1 month ago

I'm awful with the economy, dont understand it. Can you ELI5 how Trump has done that?

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Mostly with his completely volatile temperament, threatening WWIII, threatening tariffs and trying to ignite trade wars. He doesn't seem to understand that he isn't doing reality TV anymore, and the market doesn't approve.

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[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

Cannot wait for the bothsiderists to claim how donvict doing things to actively crash the economy and then gaslight about it is equivalent to how terrible it was for Biden/Kamala to speak about an economy that was "the envy of the world".

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[-] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 month ago

We've gone full circle from "Eggs are too high" to "Eggs are fine just shut up about it".

Man I can't wait for Trump to tell me that our wages being the same as they are since 2020 is actually a good thing when rent and groceries are going up, so we have even less purchasing power.

[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

Chocolate rations have been increased to 20g a week.

[-] chicagohuman@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago

You can fool some people sometime, but you can't fool all the people all the time

[-] Litebit@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Not surprisingly, he is a narcissist. https://youtu.be/cmTeg0B9tH8

[-] CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al 3 points 1 month ago

I honestly think he's a psychopath. He's hugely narcissistic, impulsive, highly manipulative and believes whatever suits him in that moment

[-] ClassStruggle@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago

Is this going to be different from the gaslighting that we've been receiving for the last four years that things are good? So far, one of the few things good to come out of the Trump administration is liberals finally admitting that the economy sucks, But they tend to think it started just a month ago.

[-] stevegiblets@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

NOT LIKE TRUMP = LIBERAL I AM SMART POLITIC MAN MY TEAM BEST TEAM

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[-] lorty@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago

The Us already does this. This is only news if you think Biden was any different.

[-] Doom@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 month ago

Is this a joke?

They are definitely different. Skewing perspective is always the thing they do but you know one of them is fucking insane about it. Dunno if you notice

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[-] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Genocide Joe told us the economy was doing awesome too.

The pseudo-science of "economics" is a fundamental tool of capitalist control. The subjective measurements of politicians are worthless. Why the fuck do I care about the "gross domestic product" when it's literally destroying the planet, we're all being paid shit, and I live in a concentration camp for opposing genocide?

[-] dan@lemmy.i.secretponi.es 11 points 1 month ago

It's convenient that you let everyone know that you're unserious in the first two words of your comment.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

/facepalm

I commented before I read all the comments, and was predicting this bothsiderist take, lol....I didn't actually think there was already one. :)

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this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025

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