Trump Spews Lies About The Economy In His Year-End Address To Nation |
President Donald Trump needed only eight seconds to start lying in his prime-time address on Wednesday night, shouting through a fairly typical unhinged rally speech, except relatively brief and to a prime-time audience directly from the White House.
“I inherited a mess years ago, and I’m fixing it. When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country,” Trump said in the first of numerous falsehoods throughout the address that his White House requested television networks carry live.
In fact, inflation was down to about 3% when Trump took office 11 months ago and was trending downward still. That trend reversed in May, after Trump declared his trade war against the rest of the world and imposed taxes on most imports ― what has become the largest tax increase on Americans in decades.
The only new announcement in the 18-minute address was that he was issuing $1,776 checks to 1.5 million military service members ― a bonus that will cost $2.5 billion.
Trump claimed the money would........