Trump underplayed economic numbers to fire up base

As he campaigned for Republicans before the midterms, people noted that President Trump was talking very little about the economy. That he was retailing lies about George Soros and demonizing would-be immigrants was par for the course, but why not tout the good economic numbers?

He finally did so, for one sentence, and then said it wasn’t very exciting, and went back to fear-mongering. This has mainly been seen as a reaffirmation, if any were needed, of his political brand. He does fear and loathing, not facts and figures.

I have a slightly different take. I don’t dispute that Trump is a demagogue, but in this case, I think he was right to underplay the economic numbers while firing up the base.

The economic story is that the trend-lines have continued on the trajectory they have been on for close to a decade now. There are jobs — mostly, they aren’t the jobs that people were hoping for. It’s a good thing there are lots of them, because you may personally require several in order to make rent.

If you are that Trumper who believed that the Donald was actually going to get you your old coal-mining job back, our economy is not your favorite subject. It didn’t happen.

There are people for whom these are exciting economic times, but they aren’t the people who come to his rallies to chant “Lock her up” and “CNN sucks.” The people with the MAGA hats are not the ones with stock portfolios: They are the ones whose take-home pay will increase by all of about 1 percent this year, net of inflation. The ones who, big picture, haven’t had a raise in a generation.

He’s right, it really isn’t all that exciting. Especially when you could be blaming Jewish financiers and migrants instead.

Eric Kuhn, Middletown