Economist Justin Wolfers on Thursday voiced his exasperation with President Donald Trump’s repeated false claims about the U.S. economy.
The University of Michigan professor, appearing on Katy Tur’s MS Now show, said “the overwhelming feeling” he had while watching Trump recently was one of simply “trying to count the number of lies.”
“And I ran out of fingers and toes,” he quipped.
Wolfers said Trump “lied and said that prices are coming down,” and “lied when he said prices were at an all-time high under President [Joe] Biden. They’re at an all-time high right now.”
He added that Trump was also incorrect in claiming inflation was low: “Inflation of 2.7% — that’s the number he used — is well above the Fed’s target.”
Wolfers said he was baffled by Trump “looking people in the eye and just lying to them about the state of the economy.”
“I’m not going to opine on the politics of that. I might have views about the morality of that,” he said.
Then he laid out the economic reality as he sees it.
“The reality is there are folks out there struggling,” Wolfers said. “Things are not as bad, bad enough that I’d be on here talking about a recession. But it’s a middling, B+ economy — and what we’re worried about is if we’re a B+ right now, if something bad were to happen, things could get a whole lot worse.”
Watch the full analysis here: