The federal government announced Friday that gross domestic product grew at a pace of 4.1% in the second quarter, the best rate we’ve seen in this country in four long years. The numbers have economists hopeful that we could be on the verge of a major breakthrough in the domestic economy – a boom period the likes of which this nation hasn’t seen since the Bush administration.
“We’re on track to hit the highest growth rate in over 13 years,” President Trump said shortly after the report was released. “And I will say this right now and I will say it strongly: As the deals come in one by one, we’re going to go a lot higher than these numbers. And these are great numbers.”
A roaring economy, of course, is the worst news possible for Democrats, who are still clinging to the hope that they can take back the House in November. Thus, liberals working for the media arm of the Democratic Party already had their columns written in advanced reaction to the numbers.
“A single three-month period of strong growth is not exactly unprecedented,” wrote the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell. “It’s also not a sign that the economy is going gangbusters or has been fundamentally transformed. What matters is whether that strong growth is sustainable. Right now, under Trump’s policies, the answer looks like a big fat no.”
About the Republican tax cuts passed by Congress and the White House, Rampell insisted it’s only going to turn into disaster in the long run.
“Right now, we’re getting a sort of sugar high from Trump’s tax cuts and spending increases,” she wrote. “That may have contributed to second-quarter GDP growth, and will likely lift it throughout this year and next.”
After that…at some point down the road…things will even out, she argued. As if anyone – Trump or anyone else – can do something for the economy that will guarantee unprecedented, continued growth for years on end. That’s not the way the markets work, and Rampell damn well knows it. The only thing you CAN judge Trump on is how the economy is doing now and how it is predicted to fare in the near future. Beyond that, it’s a guessing game. This is just an obvious attempt to steal thunder from a victory that Rampell and every other liberal critic would have happily given to Obama.
In his conclusions about the report, The New York Times’ Ben Casselman dismissed the figures as a one-shot anomaly. “Economic growth surged in the second quarter,” he wrote, “but don’t expect the boom to last. The second-quarter acceleration was widely anticipated by economists, a result of a confluence of events unlikely to recur. Most economists expect growth to slow in the second half of the year.”
Nothing demonstrated the liberal bias in the media like a round of good news that simply cannot be denied. They will look for the cloud behind every silver lining in an effort to assure their readers that, no, they weren’t dead wrong about this president. You just have to wait a while for things to get worse – then our ridiculous reporting will be vindicated at last!
We suppose that three or four years into the next Democrat administration, when the economy tanks, they’ll tell us that these are the fruits of the Trump years finally ripening on the vine. They’re committed to their narrative, and nothing in the world is going to shake them out of it. Hopefully their readers are wising up.
