Heading into November, Donald Trump’s rhetorical strategy on the economy is simple: Insist it is doomed, blame it on Kamala Harris, and tie everything back to immigration.

The Trump campaign’s thematic simplicity—fact-free, lowest-common-denominator forward— appeals to uneducated voters. Insulated from the truth by complicit right-wing echo chambers, his base enjoys the koolaid as Trump insists the sky is falling.

Trump and Vance harp about a doomed economy because they need the economy to be doomed, but economic indicators aren’t cooperating with their spin. Personalized income is up, post-COVID inflation is down, the GDP is stellar, and US stocks keep reaching all-time highs: the S&P 500 has surpassed its own record a staggering 31 times since January 2024.

If Trump’s perfidy on the economy is galling, his lies about immigration are criminal.

In February, voters outside the Fox News bubble watched as Trump wrecked a bipartisan border bill, just to preserve immigration for his presidential campaign. After falsely claiming that immigrants were raping, murdering, and killing Americans with fentanyl, he threatened any member of his own party who tried to fix the problem. Overnight, Trump became chief enabler to the chief “criminals” he claimed were killing Americans, and his base didn’t even hear about it as Fox News called........

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