Letter: Trump’s claims about economy are falsehoods
Published 1:30 am Saturday, February 21, 2026
Editor,
A common refrain I hear during discussions with MAGA loyalists goes something like this, “I don’t agree with everything Trump does, but I love what he’s doing for the economy.” When pressed for specificity I am told, “Just look at the stock market.” When I inform them that the top 10% of Americans own 87% of that stock and the bottom 50% of people working for a living own just 1% that data is shrugged off as fake news.
The Trump party line is that policies of the democratic presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden have decimated the U.S. workforce and led to the loss of millions of jobs. If the average American citizen is hearing this from the president, vice president and the fifteen cabinet level officials in the oval office, it is not be unreasonable to assume the validity of the assertions. We have a long history of trusting our elected officials to uphold their pledge of fidelity to the constitution and the truth. That trust was broken when Trump during his first term rebuffed the findings of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies conclusion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 elections. Standing next to Russian president Putin Trump proclaimed, “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
An excerpt from the book, “The Crown of Life,” written in 1869 sheds considerable light on the phenomena: “If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma, and men will die for it.” Trump and his merry band of trumpeters are astoundingly disciplined and efficient at commanding the attention of the media and propagating their propaganda agenda by simply adhering to the advice in this publication much in the same way as Stalin and Hitler did in the 20th century. Trump has proven to be a Magistro of this mantra. Now for some objective data.
Since 1989, Democratic presidents have overseen the creation of a net 49.4 million jobs, compared to 1.3 million under Republican presidents. Specifically, during the cumulative 60 months Trump has held the oval office, he has managed to amass a net loss of 2.1 million U.S. jobs. The last time a president has overseen such a drastic loss of U.S. jobs was during the Great Depression of 1929. Go Trump.
Jack Gribble
Oak Harbor
