| June 23, 2020
President Trump routinely, strategically exaggerates his achievements and stretches the truth to manipulate the media, according to a former adviser.
Some examples of Trump's intentional exaggerations: inflating the GDP growth numbers in 2018,
overstating the magnitude of drug price declines under his watch,
falsely suggesting that all Democrats want to outlaw private health insurance,
and claiming that he's the best president ever for African Americans.
“[Trump] began with a now-familiar strategy for getting the
press to cover a new fact, which is to exaggerate it so that the press might
enjoy correcting him and unwittingly disseminate the intended finding,” said
Casey Mulligan, who served as the chief economist of Trump's Council of
Economic Advisers from 2018 to 2019.
“The president’s gamble is that voters aware of his
successes on substance will tolerate his eccentricities and improprieties in
form,” said Mulligan, who lays out the case in detail in his forthcoming
tell-all book, You’re Hired!: Untold
Successes and Failures of a Populist President.
One part of Trump’s tenure that he’s particularly proud of
is economic growth. The economy had grown 3.1% over the four quarters of 2018,
which had not happened in one calendar year since 2005.
Although having the highest economic growth rate in 14 years
based on the annual calendar was significant, Mulligan said, Trump nevertheless
complained that the accomplishment was “not getting fair coverage.” Trump
decided to put a tweet out to get more attention.
“POTUS asked whether the tweet should say that it was the
fastest growth in 20 years. Or 50? What would be the sweet exaggeration spot
that would get media attention?” Trump said in a private conversation with his
economic advisers in 2019, according to Mulligan’s book.
Trump went on to cite the exaggerated GDP growth numbers during some
Trump rallies, Mulligan said.
Mulligan explained in the book that, on many occasions,
Trump would first report or tweet the numbers given to him by advisers with
“100 percent precision.” Later, though, he would embellish the claims after
consulting with his communications team, primarily social media chief Dan
Scavino and senior adviser and speechwriter Stephen Miller, gauging “whether the
coverage needed exaggeration."
When it came to the Trump administration’s success in
reducing the cost of prescription drugs in 2018, once again, the president
started off quoting accurate numbers but then slipped into exaggerations when
insufficient attention was given to the accomplishment, according to Mulligan.
Initially, Trump said drug prices in 2018 had dropped for
“the first time in nearly half a century.” This was accurate.
Just 12 days after the new drug price data had been
released, however, Trump was frustrated that the press were not talking about
it and began exaggerating during a White House Cabinet meeting at which the
press were present, claiming that drug prices had declined for the “first time
in over 50 years.” An hour later, at another televised Cabinet meeting,
according to Mulligan’s book, Trump said, “Prescription drugs, for the first
time in the history of our country, have gone down in 2018." Trump said
the press didn't want to report his administration's success because they
didn't want to give him the satisfaction.
The president, Mulligan said, is known not just for
exaggerating the facts on his own successes from time to time but also, on
occasion, for doing so to highlight his opponents' weaknesses.
According to Mulligan’s book, in fall 2018, on the
recommendation of Mulligan and advisers such as Miller, Trump began telling the
public that Democrats' "Medicare for all" plan would be “outlawing
the ability of Americans to enroll in private and employer-based plans.” This
messaging on the proposed healthcare plan was meant to highlight the negative
elements of socialism, touted by some Democrats such as 2020 presidential
contender Bernie Sanders.
This was accurate. Sanders's Medicare for All Act, for
example, would have banned private insurance.
Later, though, Trump would go on to say that “Democrats
want to outlaw private health plans,” which is an accurate description of only
some Democrats, the 141 Democratic members of the 115th Congress who supported
"Medicare for all" bills. Finally, Trump said, “the Democrats want to outlaw private
health plans” (emphasis added), which is not accurate since many Democrats do
not support "Medicare for all" and thereby do not want to outlaw
private health insurance.
Trump saying “the Democrats,” indicating all Democrats want
to outlaw private health insurance, enraged Democratic Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer, who doesn’t support "Medicare for all" and bashed Trump for the inaccuracy.
Through a series of exaggerations, Mulligan said, Trump had
successfully informed the public that "Medicare for all" would take
private health insurance away from millions of people.
Within the current context of the race riots occurring
nationwide, Mulligan said Trump’s claim that he’s the best president for
African Americans is “probably not accurate.” However, Mulligan added that
Trump saying this exaggeration gets newspapers such as the Washington Post to do a fact check on the claim because it's so
outlandish. Such fact checks then unintentionally inform people about the
positive steps Trump has taken to help the black community.
“If he hadn't made that claim, the Washington Post would have never done
any analysis of Trump policies that are good for African Americans. Mission
accomplished, right?” said Mulligan.
“He manipulates the fact checkers pretty easily,” added
Mulligan.
Why Our Economy May Be Headed for a Decade of Depression
The worst is yet to come?
In September 2006,
Nouriel Roubini told the International Monetary Fund what it didn’t want to
hear. Standing before an audience of economists at the organization’s
headquarters, the New York University professor warned that the U.S. housing market
would soon collapse — and, quite possibly, bring the global financial system
down with it. Real-estate values had been propped up by unsustainably shady
lending practices, Roubini explained. Once those prices came back to earth,
millions of underwater homeowners would default on their mortgages, trillions
of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities would unravel, and hedge funds,
investment banks, and lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could sink into insolvency.
At the time, the
global economy had just recorded its fastest half-decade of growth in 30 years.
And Nouriel Roubini was just some obscure academic. Thus, in the IMF’s cozy
confines, his remarks roused less alarm over America’s housing bubble than
concern for the professor’s psychological well-being.
Of course, the
ensuing two years turned Roubini’s prophecy into history, and the little-known
scholar of emerging markets into a Wall Street celebrity.
A decade later, “Dr. Doom” is a bear once again. While many
investors bet on a “V-shaped recovery,” Roubini is staking his reputation
on an L-shaped depression. The economist
(and host of a biweekly economic news broadcast) does expect
things to get better before they get worse: He foresees a slow, lackluster
(i.e., “U-shaped”) economic rebound in the pandemic’s immediate aftermath. But
he insists that this recovery will quickly collapse beneath the weight of the
global economy’s accumulated debts. Specifically, Roubini argues that the
massive private debts accrued during both the 2008 crash and COVID-19 crisis
will durably depress consumption and weaken the short-lived recovery.
Meanwhile, the aging of populations across the West will further undermine
growth while increasing the fiscal burdens of states already saddled with
hazardous debt loads. Although deficit spending is necessary in the present
crisis, and will appear benign at the onset of recovery, it is laying the
kindling for an inflationary conflagration by mid-decade. As the deepening
geopolitical rift between the United States and China triggers a wave of
deglobalization, negative supply shocks akin those of the 1970s are going to
raise the cost of real resources, even as hyperexploited workers suffer
perpetual wage and benefit declines. Prices will rise, but growth will peter
out, since ordinary people will be forced to pare back their consumption more
and more. Stagflation will beget depression. And through it all, humanity will
be beset by unnatural disasters, from extreme weather events wrought by
man-made climate change to pandemics induced by our disruption of natural
ecosystems.
Roubini allows that,
after a decade of misery, we may get around to developing a “more inclusive,
cooperative, and stable international order.” But, he hastens to add, “any
happy ending assumes that we find a way to survive” the hard times to come.
Intelligencer
recently spoke with Roubini about our impending doom.
You predict that the
coronavirus recession will be followed by a lackluster recovery and global
depression. The financial markets ostensibly see a much brighter
future. What are they missing and why?
Well, first of all,
my prediction is not for 2020. It’s a prediction that these ten major forces will, by the
middle of the coming decade, lead us into a “Greater Depression.” Markets, of
course, have a shorter horizon. In the short run, I expect a U-shaped recovery
while the markets seem to be pricing in a V-shape recovery.
Of course the markets
are going higher because there’s a massive monetary stimulus, there’s a massive
fiscal stimulus. People expect that the news about the contagion will improve,
and that there’s going to be a vaccine at some point down the line. And there
is an element “FOMO” [fear of missing out]; there are millions of new online
accounts — unemployed people sitting at home doing day-trading — and they’re
essentially playing the market based on pure sentiment. My view is that there’s
going to be a meaningful correction once people realize this is going to be a
U-shaped recovery. If you listen carefully to what Fed officials are saying —
or even what JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are saying — initially they were all in
the V camp, but now they’re all saying, well, maybe it’s going to be more of a
U. The consensus is moving in a different direction.
Your prediction of a
weak recovery seems predicated on there being a persistent shortfall in
consumer demand due to income lost during the pandemic. A bullish investor
might counter that the Cares Act has left the bulk of laid-off workers with as
much — if not more — income than they had been earning at their former jobs.
Meanwhile, white-collar workers who’ve remained employed are typically earning
as much as they used to, but spending far less. Together, this might augur a
surge in post-pandemic spending that powers a V-shaped recovery. What does the
bullish story get wrong?
Yes, there are
unemployment benefits. And some unemployed people may be making more money than
when they were working. But those unemployment benefits are going to run out in July. The consensus
says the unemployment rate is headed to 25 percent. Maybe we get lucky. Maybe
there’s an early recovery, and it only goes to 16 percent. Either way, tons of
people are going to lose unemployment benefits in July. And if they’re rehired,
it’s not going to be like before — formal employment, full benefits. You want
to come back to work at my restaurant? Tough luck. I can hire you only on an
hourly basis with no benefits and a low wage. That’s what every business is
going to be offering. Meanwhile, many, many people are going to be without jobs
of any kind. It took us ten years — between 2009 and 2019 — to create 22
million jobs. And we’ve lost 30 million jobs in two months.
So when unemployment
benefits expire, lots of people aren’t going to have any income. Those who do
get jobs are going to work under more miserable conditions than before. And
people, even middle-income people, given the shock that has just occurred —
which could happen again in the summer, could happen again in the winter — you
are going to want more precautionary savings. You are going to cut back on
discretionary spending. Your credit score is going to be worse. Are you going
to go buy a home? Are you gonna buy a car? Are you going to dine out? In
Germany and China, they already reopened all the stores a month ago. You look
at any survey, the restaurants are totally empty. Almost nobody’s buying
anything. Everybody’s worried and cautious. And this is in Germany, where unemployment
is up by only one percent. Forty percent of Americans have less than $400 in liquid cash saved for an emergency. You think they are going to spend?
Graphic: Financial Times
Graphic: Financial Times
You’re going to start
having food riots soon enough. Look at the luxury stores in New York. They’ve
either boarded them up or emptied their shelves, because they’re worried people
are going to steal the Chanel bags. The few stores that are open, like my Whole
Foods, have security guards both inside and outside. We are one step away from
food riots. There are lines three miles long at food banks. That’s what’s
happening in America. You’re telling me everything’s going to become normal in
three months? That’s lunacy.
Your projection of a
“Greater Depression” is premised on deglobalization sparking negative supply
shocks. And that prediction of deglobalization is itself rooted in the notion
that the U.S. and China are locked in a so-called Thucydides trap, in which the geopolitical tensions between a dominant and rising
power will overwhelm mutual financial self-interest. But given the deep
interconnections between the American and Chinese economies — and warm
relations between much of the U.S. and Chinese financial elite — isn’t it
possible that class solidarity will take precedence over Great Power rivalry? In other
words, don’t the most powerful people in both countries understand they have a
lot to lose financially and economically from decoupling? And if so, why shouldn’t
we see the uptick in jingoistic
rhetoric on both sides as mere
posturing for a domestic audience?
First of all, my
argument for why inflation will eventually come back is not just based on
U.S.-China relations. I actually have 14 separate arguments for why this will
happen. That said, everybody agrees that there is the beginning of a Cold War
between the U.S. and China. I was in Beijing in November of 2015, with a
delegation that met with Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People. And he
spent the first 15 minutes of his remarks speaking, unprompted, about why the
U.S. and China will not get caught in a Thucydides trap, and why there will
actually be a peaceful rise of China.
Since then, Trump got
elected. Now, we have a full-scale trade war, technology war, financial war,
monetary war, technology, information, data, investment, pretty much anything
across the board. Look at tech — there is complete decoupling. They just
decided Huawei isn’t going to have any access to U.S. semiconductors and
technology. We’re imposing total restrictions on the transfer of technology
from the U.S. to China and China to the U.S. And if the United States argues
that 5G or Huawei is a backdoor to the Chinese government, the tech war will
become a trade war. Because tomorrow, every piece of consumer electronics, even
your lowly coffee machine or microwave or toaster, is going to have a 5G chip.
That’s what the internet of things is about. If the Chinese can listen to you
through your smartphone, they can listen to you through your toaster. Once we
declare that 5G is going to allow China to listen to our communication, we will
also have to ban all household electronics made in China. So, the decoupling is
happening. We’re going to have a “splinternet.” It’s only a matter of how much
and how fast.
And there is going to
be a cold war between the U.S. and China. Even the foreign policy Establishment
— Democrats and Republicans — that had been in favor of better relations with
China has become skeptical in the last few years. They say, “You know, we
thought that China was going to become more open if we let them into the WTO.
We thought they’d become less authoritarian.” Instead, under Xi Jinping, China
has become more state capitalist, more authoritarian, and instead of biding its
time and hiding its strength, like Deng Xiaoping wanted it to do, it’s flexing
its geopolitical muscle. And the U.S., rightly or wrongly, feels threatened.
I’m not making a normative statement. I’m just saying, as a matter of fact, we
are in a Thucydides trap. The only debate is about whether there will be a cold
war or a hot one. Historically, these things have led to a hot war in 12 out of
16 episodes in 2,000 years of history. So we’ll be lucky if we just get a cold
war.
Some Trumpian
nationalists and labor-aligned progressives might see an upside in your
prediction that America is going to bring manufacturing back “onshore.” But you
insist that ordinary Americans will suffer from the downsides of reshoring
(higher consumer prices) without enjoying the ostensible benefits (more job
opportunities and higher wages). In your telling, onshoring won’t actually
bring back jobs, only accelerate automation. And then, again with automation,
you insist that Americans will suffer from the downside (unemployment, lower
wages from competition with robots) but enjoy none of the upside from the
productivity gains that robotization will ostensibly produce. So, what do you
say to someone who looks at your forecast and decides that you are indeed “Dr.
Doom” — not a realist, as you claim to be, but a pessimist, who ignores the
bright side of every subject?
When you reshore, you
are moving production from regions of the world like China, and other parts of
Asia, that have low labor costs, to parts of the world like the U.S. and Europe
that have higher labor costs. That is a fact. How is the corporate sector going
respond to that? It’s going to respond by replacing labor with robots,
automation, and AI.
I was recently in
South Korea. I met the head of Hyundai, the third-largest automaker in the
world. He told me that tomorrow, they could convert their factories to run with
all robots and no workers. Why don’t they do it? Because they have unions that
are powerful. In Korea, you cannot fire these workers, they have lifetime
employment.
But suppose you take
production from a labor-intensive factory in China — in any industry — and move
it into a brand-new factory in the United States. You don’t have any legacy
workers, any entrenched union. You are going to design that factory to use as
few workers as you can. Any new factory in the U.S. is going to be
capital-intensive and labor-saving. It’s been happening for the last ten years
and it’s going to happen more when we reshore. So reshoring means increasing
production in the United States but not increasing employment. Yes, there will
be productivity increases. And the profits of those firms that relocate
production may be slightly higher than they were in China (though that isn’t
certain since automation requires a lot of expensive capital investment).
But you’re not going
to get many jobs. The factory of the future is going to be one person manning
1,000 robots and a second person cleaning the floor. And eventually the guy
cleaning the floor is going to be replaced by a Roomba because a Roomba doesn’t
ask for benefits or bathroom breaks or get sick and can work 24-7.
The fundamental
problem today is that people think there is a correlation between what’s good
for Wall Street and what’s good for Main Street. That wasn’t even true during
the global financial crisis when we were saying, “We’ve got to bail out Wall
Street because if we don’t, Main Street is going to collapse.” How did Wall
Street react to the crisis? They fired workers. And when they rehired them,
they were all gig workers, contractors, freelancers, and so on. That’s what
happened last time. This time is going to be more of the same. Thirty-five to
40 million people have already been fired. When they start slowly rehiring some
of them (not all
of them), those workers are going to get part-time jobs, without benefits,
without high wages. That’s the only way for the corporates to survive. Because
they’re so highly leveraged today, they’re going to need to cut costs, and the
first cost you cut is labor. But of course, your labor cost is my consumption.
So in an equilibrium where everyone’s slashing labor costs, households are
going to have less income. And they’re going to save more to protect themselves
from another coronavirus crisis. And so consumption is going to be weak. That’s
why you get the U-shaped recovery.
There’s a conflict
between workers and capital. For a decade, workers have been screwed. Now,
they’re going to be screwed more. There’s a conflict between small business and
large business.
Millions of these
small businesses are going to go bankrupt. Half of the restaurants in New York
are never going to reopen. How can they survive? They have such tiny margins.
Who’s going to survive? The big chains. Retailers. Fast food. The small
businesses are going to disappear in the post-coronavirus economy. So there is
a fundamental conflict between Wall Street (big banks and big firms) and Main
Street (workers and small businesses). And Wall Street is going to win.
Clearly, you’re
bearish on the potential of existing governments intervening in that conflict
on Main Street’s behalf. But if we made you dictator of the United States
tomorrow, what policies would you enact to strengthen labor, and avert (or at
least mitigate) the Greater Depression?
The market, as
currently ordered, is going to make capital stronger and labor weaker. So, to
change this, you need to invest in your workers. Give them education, a social
safety net — so if they lose their jobs to an economic or technological shock,
they get job training, unemployment benefits, social welfare, health care for
free. Otherwise, the trends of the market are going to imply more income and
wealth inequality. There’s a lot we can do to rebalance it. But I don’t think
it’s going to happen anytime soon. If Bernie Sanders had become
president, maybe we
could’ve had policies of that sort. Of course, Bernie Sanders is to the right
of the CDU party in Germany. I mean, Angela Merkel is to the left of Bernie
Sanders. Boris Johnson is to the left of Bernie Sanders, in terms of social
democratic politics. Only by U.S. standards does Bernie Sanders look like a
Bolshevik.
In Germany, the
unemployment rate has gone up by one percent. In the U.S., the unemployment
rate has gone from 4 percent to 20 percent (correctly measured) in two months.
We lost 30 million jobs. Germany lost 200,000. Why is that the case? You have
different economic institutions. Workers sit on the boards of German companies.
So you share the costs of the shock between the workers, the firms, and the
government.
In 2009, you argued that if deficit spending to combat high unemployment
continued indefinitely, “it will fuel persistent, large budget deficits and
lead to inflation.” You were right on the first count obviously. And yet, a
decade of fiscal expansion not only failed to produce high inflation, but was
insufficient to reach the Fed’s 2 percent inflation goal. Is it fair to say
that you underestimated America’s fiscal capacity back then? And if you
overestimated the harms of America’s large public debts in the past, what makes
you confident you aren’t doing so in the present?
First of all, in
2009, I was in favor of a bigger stimulus than the one that we got. I was not
in favor of fiscal consolidation. There’s a huge difference between the global
financial crisis and the coronavirus crisis because the former was a crisis of
aggregate demand, given the housing bust. And so monetary policy alone was
insufficient and you needed fiscal stimulus. And the fiscal stimulus that Obama
passed was smaller than justified. So stimulus was the right response, at least
for a while. And then you do consolidation.
What I have
argued this time
around is that in the short run, this is both a supply shock and a demand
shock. And, of course, in the short run, if you want to avoid a depression, you
need to do monetary and fiscal stimulus. What I’m saying is that once you run a
budget deficit of not 3, not 5, not 8, but 15 or 20 percent of GDP — and
you’re going to fully monetize it (because that’s what the Fed has been doing) — you still won’t
have inflation in the short run, not this year or next year, because you have
slack in goods markets, slack in labor markets, slack in commodities markets,
etc. But there will be inflation in the post-coronavirus world. This is because
we’re going to see two big negative supply shocks. For the last decade, prices
have been constrained by two positive supply shocks — globalization and
technology. Well, globalization is going to become deglobalization thanks to
decoupling, protectionism, fragmentation, and so on. So that’s going to be a
negative supply shock. And technology is not going to be the same as before.
The 5G of Erickson and Nokia costs 30 percent more than the one of Huawei, and
is 20 percent less productive. So to install non-Chinese 5G networks, we’re
going to pay 50 percent more. So technology is going to gradually become a
negative supply shock. So you have two major forces that had been exerting
downward pressure on prices moving in the opposite direction, and you have a massive
monetization of fiscal deficits. Remember the 1970s? You had two negative
supply shocks — ’73 and ’79, the Yom Kippur War and the Iranian Revolution.
What did you get? Stagflation.
Now, I’m not talking
about hyperinflation — not Zimbabwe or Argentina. I’m not even talking about 10
percent inflation. It’s enough for inflation to go from one to 4 percent. Then,
ten-year Treasury bonds — which today have interest rates close to zero percent
— will need to have an inflation premium. So, think about a ten-year Treasury,
five years from now, going from one percent to 5 percent, while inflation goes
from near zero to 4 percent. And ask yourself, what’s going to happen to the
real economy? Well, in the fourth quarter of 2018, when the Federal Reserve
tried to raise rates above 2 percent, the market couldn’t take it. So we don’t
need hyperinflation to have a disaster.
In other words,
you’re saying that because of structural weaknesses in the economy, even modest
inflation would be crisis-inducing because key economic actors are dependent on
near-zero interest rates?
For the last decade,
debt-to-GDP ratios in the U.S. and globally have been rising. And debts were
rising for corporations and households as well. But we survived this, because,
while debt ratios were high, debt-servicing ratios
were low, since we had zero percent policy rates and long rates close to zero —
or, in Europe and Japan, negative. But the second the Fed started to hike
rates, there was panic.
In December 2018, Jay
Powell said, “You know what. I’m at 2.5 percent. I’m going to go to 3.25. And
I’m going to continue running down my balance sheet.” And the market totally
crashed. And then, literally on January 2, 2019, Powell comes back and says,
“Sorry, I was kidding. I’m not going to do quantitative tightening. I’m not
going to raise rates.” So the economy couldn’t take a Fed funds rate of 2.5
percent. In the strongest economy in the world. There is so much debt, if
long-term rates go from zero to 3 percent, the economy is going to crash.
You’ve written a lot
about negative supply shocks from deglobalization. Another potential source of
such shocks is climate change. Many scientists believe that rising temperatures
threaten the supply of our most precious commodities — food and water. How does
climate figure into your analysis?
I am not an expert on
global climate change. But one of the ten forces that I believe will bring a
Greater Depression is man-made disasters. And global climate change, which is
producing more extreme weather phenomena — on one side, hurricanes, typhoons,
and floods; on the other side, fires, desertification, and agricultural
collapse — is not a natural disaster. The science says these extreme events are
becoming more frequent, are coming farther inland, and are doing more damage.
And they are doing this now, not 30 years from now.
So there is climate
change. And its economic costs are becoming quite extreme. In Indonesia,
they’ve decided to move the capital out of Jakarta to somewhere inland because they know that their capital is
going to be fully flooded. In New York, there are plans to build a wall all
around Manhattan at the cost of $120 billion. And then they said, “Oh no, that
wall is going to be so ugly, it’s going to feel like we’re in a prison.” So
they want to do something near the Verrazzano Bridge that’s going to cost another $120 billion. And it’s not even
going to work.
The Paris Accord said
1.5 degrees. Then they say two. Now, every scientist says, “Look, this is a
voluntary agreement, we’ll be lucky if we get three — and more likely, it will
be four — degree Celsius increases by the end of the century.” How are we going
to live in a world where temperatures are four degrees higher? And we’re not
doing anything about it. The Paris Accord is just a joke. And it’s not just the
U.S. and Trump. China’s not doing anything. The Europeans aren’t doing
anything. It’s only talk.
And then there’s the
pandemics. These are also man-made disasters. You’re destroying the ecosystems
of animals. You are putting them into cages — the bats and pangolins and all
the other wildlife — and they interact and create viruses and then spread to
humans. First, we had HIV. Then we had SARS. Then MERS, then swine flu, then
Zika, then Ebola, now this one. And there’s a connection between global climate
change and pandemics. Suppose the permafrost in Siberia melts. There are
probably viruses that have been in there since the Stone Age. We don’t know
what kind of nasty stuff is going to get out. We don’t even know what’s coming.
An
Illustrated History of Government Agencies Twisting the Truth to Align With
White House Misinformation
When
Trump pushes outlandish misinformation, his federal agencies have turned it into
official guidance and policy. Some have later had to reverse themselves.
by Eric
Umansky June 22, 5:28 p.m. EDT
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
The 45th President and His Administration
It has become a familiar pattern: President Donald Trump says
something that doesn’t line up with the facts held by scientists and other
experts at government agencies. Then, instead of pushing back, federal
officials scramble to reconcile the fiction with their own public statements.
It happened in March, when Trump pushed his opinion that
antimalarial drugs could treat COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention issued an unusual directive that lent credence to the president’s
perspective: “Although optimal dosing and duration of hydroxychloroquine for
treatment of COVID-19 are unknown, some U.S. clinicians have reported
anecdotally” on specific dosages that the CDC then lists. The CDC’s language —
which the agency later retracted — shocked experts, who said the drug needed to
be treated with caution. The CDC told Reuters the agency had prepared the
guidance at the behest of the White House.
Perhaps the best known example of an agency twisting itself
into a pretzel stems from “Sharpiegate.” After the National Weather Service’s
Birmingham, Alabama, office contradicted Trump’s Sharpie fable that Hurricane
Dorian threatened the state, the agency overseeing the office put out a
statement backing the president over the scientists. Emails obtained by
BuzzFeed and The Washington Post showed just how the episode roiled the agency.
“You have no idea how hard I’m fighting to keep politics out of science,” one
official wrote. Another email simply had one word: “HELP!!!”
On the same day last week, two separate agencies cut through
the White House influence with their own factual conclusions.
The Food and Drug Administration announced last Monday that
it was revoking emergency approval of the malaria drugs, saying that the dosing
regimens promoted are “unlikely to produce an antiviral effect” and that their
risks — which include potentially fatal cardiac side effects — outweigh the
possible benefits.
Also that day, an independent panel investigating Sharpiegate
on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that top
officials — including acting chief Neil Jacobs — violated the policy that
forbids political interference with NOAA’s scientific findings. Meanwhile,
Trump nominated Jacobs to permanently lead the agency in December.
ProPublica catalogued other instances in which government
entities have changed language or made other moves buttressing the White
House’s unsupported assertions.
“Our Stockpile”
The morning after Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner asserted
that the national stockpile is “our stockpile” and not for states, the
government changed the wording on the stockpile’s website.
Before Kushner’s comments, it said the “stockpile ensures
that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most.”
That became: The stockpile’s “role is to supplement state and
local supplies,” and “many states have products stockpiled, as well.”
A government spokesman said the update had been in the works
for a week before Kushner’s comments. The spokesperson did not allow their name
to be used.
“No Proof of Anything”
In another instance, after Trump warned in a tweet of
“unknown Middle Easterners” crossing the border from Mexico — a “National
Emergy [sic]” — the Department of Homeland Security released figures to support
the claim. Upon inspection, it became clear the figures did nothing of the
sort.
A few days later, the president backed off his claim of
suspicious Middle Easterners crossing the border. “There’s no proof of
anything,” Trump said, “but there could very well be.”
Agencies’ attempts to bolster the White House haven’t always
borne fruit. In late 2018, Trump again warned about dangers at the Mexican
border. “Women are tied up, they’re bound, duct tape put around their faces,
around their mouths, in many cases they can’t even breathe,” Trump said.
“They’re put in the backs of cars or vans or trucks.”
It wasn’t at all clear what Trump was referring to, but a top
Border Patrol official tried to be of assistance. He emailed agents asking them
to pass along any such evidence. (The email was obtained by a Vox reporter,
Dara Lind, who’s now at ProPublica.)
The Border Patrol never followed up with examples.
The Inaugural Example
And then there was Trump’s first day in office. He publicly
complained about what he said were misleading photographs comparing the size of
the audience at his inauguration with President Barack Obama’s, and then-White
House Spokesman Sean Spicer falsely claimed a record crowd size.
The Post soon reported the president called the head of the
National Park Service to demand it release photos that would counter what he
saw as the misleading comparisons. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy
spokesperson, said the call was simply a reflection of a president who is “so
accessible, and constantly in touch.”
A government investigation later found that after the call a
National Park Service photographer cropped photos to take out empty areas. As
the report noted, “He selected a number of photos, based on his professional
judgment, that concentrated on the area of the national mall where most of the
crowd was standing.”
The report noted that no one ordered him to do so.
The 10% Tax Cut for the Middle Class
Congress has also gotten involved. Right before the 2018
elections, Trump made unplanned comments that middle-class Americans would be
getting a 10% tax cut. “We’ll be putting it in next week,” Trump said at a
campaign rally in Houston. Nobody in the White House or Capitol Hill had even
heard Trump talk about it before.
Republicans responded by saying they were working on rolling
out something — reportedly a nonbinding resolution — “over the coming weeks,”
as one congressman put it.
The cuts never happened.
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