On top of all the legal problems that Donald Trump now faces, Don Lemon points out that the potential slowdown of the economy could be an even greater threat to the presidency when the Barack Obama effect wears off.
On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, the host led off his second hour by noting that Trump’s presidency has been “buoyed by an economy that’s been going gangbusters, an economy President Trump inherited from President Barack Obama and juiced with a big mostly corporate tax cut passed a year ago this week.”
Noting that “the economy is suddenly looking less rosie,” Lemon pointed out that “The markets under Trump are now doing much worse than they did in the same time period under Obama,” and showed a graph comparing the S&P 500 under the two administrations.
“The boost the tax cuts gave the economy fading. It led to more than $1 trillion in stock buybacks, helping shareholders, but American workers didn’t see a noticeable boost in wages compared to the years before, and the federal deficit is ballooning,” Lemon added.
Lemon’s panel agreed that since Trump has taken credit for the economy, he will surely get the political blame if the economy falters.
“He has taken full credit for things that he doesn’t deserve full credit for because a lot of this stuff gets set in motion before, and a lot of it is about the end of the Obama presidency,” New York Times columnist Frank Bruni said. “He then has to take full blame for it when in the second two years of his presidency, after his policies have had more time to kick in, the economy is doing worse. He’ll try to deflect that and come with Trump conspiracy theories, and blame it on Barack Obama, he’ll probably find a way to blame it on Hillary Clinton, but it won’t fly.”
“He rode the Obama economy for the first part of the presidency,” Lemon said. “He’s still riding it!”
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
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