FactChecking Trump’s Farewell Remarks
In a video farewell address on Jan. 19 and in remarks at Joint Base Andrews before leaving for Florida on Jan. 20, outgoing President Donald Trump distorted the facts on the economy, his tax cuts, veterans, the military, drug prices and more.
Economy
Trump, Jan. 19: We also built the greatest economy in the history of the world.
In his farewell speech, Trump pointed to the stock market — as he often does — as a measure of the nation’s economic success. But economists generally measure a nation’s health by the growth of its real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product. The U.S. rate of growth was 2.3% in 2017, 3.0% in 2018 and 2.2% in 2019, according to revised figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Over the last 39 years — dating to Ronald Reagan’s presidency — the nation’s real economic growth has exceeded Trump’s peak year of 3.0% 17 times, including most recently under then-President Barack Obama in 2015.
Trump, Jan. 19: When the virus took its brutal toll on the world’s economy, we launched the fastest economic recovery our country has ever seen. We passed nearly $4 trillion in economic relief, saved or supported over 50 million jobs, and slashed the unemployment rate in half. These are numbers that our country has never seen before.
Trump is spinning the facts when he speaks of saving jobs, spurring thepeaked at 14.8% in April, when the economy was largely shutdown because of COVID-19. But even at
