MSNBC host Joe Scarborough blamed the media for the Presidents Day spat between President Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama over the economy.
Tuesday’s episode of Morning Joe opened with Scarborough condemning coverage of the economy under Trump, who fired off several tweets ripping Obama for “trying to take credit” for the strength of the U.S. financial situation.
Scarborough disagreed with Trump, claiming that Obama’s economy was “much stronger” than Trump’s and blamed the press for “parroting” the current president’s talking points about the economy.
“We’ve had 11 years of uninterrupted economic growth,” Scarborough said. “It started — the majority of it was through the Obama administration, and if you just take the three years that Donald Trump has been in office, you take that time period, and you compare it to Barack Obama’s final three years, by just about every measure, Barack Obama’s economy was much stronger than Donald Trump’s economy.”
He continued, “What’s so fascinating is that the media runs around all the time, and they’ve been doing it for years, talking about — well, parroting what Donald Trump says about how great the economy’s been.”
Scarborough acknowledged that the economy has continued to climb under Trump but argued that Trump’s economy has not performed as well as those of his predecessors. Citing a report from Axios, he said, “You look at the last 10 presidents and their GDP growth throughout their administrations? Six in 10 of those presidents, according to Axios yesterday and just according to government statistics, actually had stronger economies than Donald Trump.”
Although the MSNBC host claimed that 6 in 10 of the last presidential terms had better economies than Trump, according to the report, only five of the last presidential terms had better GDP growth than Trump, and neither of Obama’s terms sported better average GDP growth. Obama averaged 2.0% GDP growth in his first term and 2.3% in his second term, while Trump has averaged 2.5% growth.
Still, Scarborough claimed that the perception that Obama’s economy was inferior to Trump’s is the fault of the media.
He said, “Let me say that one more time just for people in the media who keep parroting what Donald Trump says, that this is the strongest economy ever: 6 out of the last 10 presidents have had stronger economies, bigger economic growth, bigger GDP growth than Donald Trump, which means that once again, Donald Trump is in the bottom half of his class.”
The Axios report referenced by Scarborough showed Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton with the highest GDP growth, with the former averaging 3.1% and 3.9% growth and the latter averaging 3.5% and 4.0% growth in their first and second terms.
Of the list, the only other presidential term to have stronger average GDP growth than Trump was George W. Bush’s first term. Trump’s economic performance surpassed that of Bush’s second term, both of Obama’s terms, and George H.W. Bush’s only term.
A recent poll from Gallup showed that more people credited Trump for the current economy than Obama, with 62% reporting that Trump deserves some credit compared to Obama’s 51%.
