Trump Flips Obama's 'Magic Wand' Quote Right Back on Him as Job Market Sizzles
When then-candidate Donald Trump was running for office, one of his primary promises to potential voters was that he would jump-start the economy to such an extent that there would be a resurgence in manufacturing jobs and the nation’s gross domestic product growth rate would meet and exceed 4 or 5 percent.
Of course, all of the economic “experts” and media pundits scoffed at the notion and insisted that manufacturing jobs were gone for good and a 1-2 percent GDP growth rate was the “new normal” that everyone should get used to.
Then-President Barack Obama even got in on the act, famously dismissing Trump’s vows during a PBS townhall event in 2016 as being something that was utterly impossible to achieve, without the use of some sort of nonexistent “magic wand.”
After again reiterating the narrative that “some of those jobs from the past just aren’t gonna come back,” Obama tried to throw cold water on Trump’s promises.
“He’s gonna bring all these jobs back. Well how is he gonna do that?” Obama asked. “What are you gonna do? There’s no answer to it. He says, ‘I’m gonna negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate a better deal? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is, he doesn’t have an answer.”
Well, much to Obama’s chagrin, his assertions about the continued dismal state of the economy have been proven wrong these past two years under Trump, and now the president has provided the “answer” that Obama was rhetorically seeking in 2016, according to the New York Post.
Taking to Twitter, Trump tweeted on Monday, “‘President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP,’ stated President Obama. I guess I have a magic wand, 4.2%, and we will do MUCH better than this! We have just begun.”
“President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP,” stated President Obama. I guess I have a magic wand, 4.2%, and we will do MUCH better than this! We have just begun.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2018
Trump’s tweet referenced the estimated 4.2 percent GDP growth rate for the second quarter of 2018, a significantly greater growth rate than the 1-2 percent we were all told was the “new normal.”
There are plenty of skeptics of the Atlanta Fed’s “GDP Now” forecasts, and they do have a historical tendency of starting off high prior to dropping a bit as actual information and economic metrics are examined in greater detail.
That said, a GDP growth rate remaining in the 4 percent range is still leaps and bounds better than what was seen in the Obama years, or during the economic calamity so direly predicted to occur if Trump were to win the election.
It’s also worth noting that Obama never experienced an annual average GDP growth rate greater than 3 percent during his tenure in office, as glumly confirmed by Politifact, though he did have a handful of isolated quarters where the GDP reached the four percent range — and one quarter at 5.1 percent — as pointed out by the Post.
Trump does indeed possess a “magic wand” when it comes to the economy, but there is really nothing magical about it at all. Trump’s “magic wand” consists of cutting burdensome regulations, cutting corporate and personal taxes, engaging in fairer trade deals with other nations and creating a business-friendly environment within the United States.
Obama could have potentially seen similar growth rates as Trump has seen over the past two years if he had adopted similar economic policies as Trump has, but he most certainly didn’t have similar policies and therefore didn’t experience similar economic growth.
The fact that Obama is now attempting to claim credit for Trump’s economic success — when in reality it has come directly because of the reversal of so many Obama policies — is simply laughable and should be mockingly dismissed by all Americans, along with his ridiculously disproven “magic wand” speech.
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