Donald Trump tried to play the blame game regarding the bad economic news announced on Wednesday, but few people on social media are buying his latest excuse.
A preliminary estimate shows the U.S. economy shrank by .3% during the first three months of Trump’s second term, compared to the 2.4% increase of gross domestic product during Joe Biden’s last quarter in office.
Experts say the numbers could be a warning sign of a pending recession, especially since Trump seems to be going full steam ahead on applying tariffs that could raise prices, crush growth and spike unemployment.
But while the shrinkage happened on Trump’s watch, he refused to concede one tiny, itsy-bitsy level of accountability in a post he made on his Truth Social platform before the stock markets opened.
“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” Trump insisted. “I didn’t take over until January 20th.”
He then claimed that once his tariffs “start kicking,” and companies start to move back to the U.S., “Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’”
Many people on social media were very skeptical about the president’s claim, contrasting it with another post Trump made in January 2024, in which he claimed the then-great stock market should be called “The Trump Stock Market” because his polls against Biden were so good that investors were predicting his win.
Many people brutally mocked the president’s paradoxical statements that he should get credit for a good economy under Biden, but a pass when his own administration has bad numbers.
