As wreckage piles up, Trump and his aides retreat to fantasyland

[Zorro]

Every remark spins a different strand of make-believe.

This week brought the grim news that the Trump administration’s policies had thrown the economy into reverse, turning the 2.4 percent annualized GDP growth of the last quarter of 2024 into a 0.3 percent contraction in the first quarter of 2025. It was the worst showing since the pandemic, ending nearly three years of steady expansion.
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“Growth has simply vanished,” Chris Rupkey, chief economist at financial research firm Fwdbonds, wrote to clients. Though some of the reversal might have been caused by a surge in imports before President Donald Trump’s tariffs took effect, “there is simply no way for policy advisers to sugarcoat this,” he wrote.

Oh no?

Soon after the dismal GDP report, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro marched out to the White House driveway and announced that the report “really should be very positive news for America” and was the best negative growth report “I have ever seen in my life.” The rosy adjectives flowed: “very, very good and quite encouraging … huge, literally off the charts ... good, strong news ... all things are good. So we felt really good about that number.”

He faced the CNBC camera and said the same thing. “We really like where we’re at now,” he asserted.

https://wapo.st/3RIvtXZ

[Native]

1. Damn this is a fabulous piece!

This absurdity became the official White House line. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement saying that “the underlying numbers tell the real story of the strong momentum President Trump is delivering” and that Trump’s policies “are fueling an economic boom.”

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. And bust is boom. As the grave consequences of the administration’s policies become apparent, Trump and his lieutenants have retreated to a fantasyland.