Day 1,288: Trump goes full dictator to get focus off worst GDP quarter in U.S. history
When in doubt, two of Donald Trump’s favorite pivots are toward the economy and authoritarianism. Amid plummeting poll numbers, the one thing that Trump could point to, the former, is teetering, leading to his immediate push into the latter.
Largely thanks to a horrific federal response to COVID-19, the American economy has taken far longer to get back on its feet than its counterparts. That led to easily the largest quarterly GDP drop in American history.
Gross domestic product from April to June plunged 32.9% on an annualized basis, according to the Commerce Department’s first reading on the data released Thursday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a drop of 34.7%.
Still, it was the worst drop ever, with the closest previously coming in mid-1921.
The report “just highlights how deep and dark the hole is that the economy cratered into in Q2,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “It’s a very deep and dark hole and we’re coming out of it, but it’ going to take a long time to get out.”
The figures don’t come close to the worst of the worst of the Great Recession or the Great Depression.
By comparison, the worst quarter during the financial crisis of 2008 was the 8.4% GDP drop in the fourth quarter of that year. The previous low-water mark was a 10% slide in the first quarter of 1958, while the worst in recorded history came in Q2 of 1921.
Knowing GDP figures were going to drop on Thursday, Trump clearly thought about a way to preempt the expected-to-be-awful news. He settled, as he often does, on autocracy, with a call to “delay the election”.
Americans voted during the Civil War, World War I, the 1918 flu pandemic, World War II, and many other times of national and international turmoil. Huge chunks of those votes came via mail without any whiff of controversy. Trump’s idea would require an act of Congress, which has no appetite for such shenanigans, even among Republicans.
In terms of authoritarianism, “delaying or canceling a fair election because I might lose” is among the deepest red flags on the list. Even his staunchest supporters were stunned, with the co-founder of the Federalist Society, the powerful, right-wing legal organization, calling for Trump’s “immediate impeachment.”
Proving irony isn’t dead, Trump claimed he would win what he called just hours earlier “the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history.”
After three-and-a-half years, Donald Trump’s America is the tanking of the economy, blatant attempts to shovel dirt on democracy, heightened racial tensions and more than 150,000 Americans dead from a pandemic with no end in sight.
1,288 days in, 174 to go
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