Fox & Friends Lie About Trump Stock Market Gains

Click here for an article at Crooks & Liars, by John Amato, entitled "Fox & Friends Lies: Inflates Stock Market Gains Under Trump." The Dow hit a record 22,000 commented on by the curvy-couch folks as follows:

During their opening segment, they turned to the economy and co-host Pete Hegseth said, "Nobody would have thought six months ago the DOW would be at 22K, or potential 22K which it may reach today."

Clayton Morris, sub-host immediately chimed in, "Think about this, 22,000 - when [Trump] took office six months ago, 16,000 was sort of unheard of at that time."

Amato says:

Reality check: On January, 20th 2017, the DOW closed at 19,827.25. Which rounded up would be 20,000.

When Obama took over from W., on the other hand, the economy was losing 750,000 jobs a month and the Dow bottomed out at 6,594.44 on March 5, 2009. From there on, the improvement was steady -- slow at first, but gaining momentum throughout Obama's presidency. Investors were confident that the economy was on sufficiently safe ground that even the election of Trump wouldn't turn it around -- and to be sure, Trump promised a business-friendly administration with lots of regulatory rollback. During the campaign, Trump frequently mocked the 5% unemployment rate as a sham, and once claimed it could be as high as 42%:

"Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment. The number is probably 28-29 as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently the number may be as high as 42%. If we had 5% unemployment, do you think we’d have gatherings like this?,” Trump said.

Of course, once he was elected, the good unemployment figures were rock-solid truthful. Not hypocritical at all.