More Trump-Style Winning: The U.S. National Debt Now Exceeds $23 Trillion

Candidate Trump promised that he would be able to pay off the national debt after eight years in the White House. He was already assuming, in typical fashion, that he would not only win the 2016 election, but would win 2020, as well.

Now, three years and change into his disastrous presidency, which I feel has secured his place as the worst president in American history, he has only added to it.

When he took over, the debt was just shy of $20 trillion. Here is what he claimed:

"The country - we took it over, it owed $20 trillion. As you know, the last eight years they borrowed more than it did in the whole history of our country. So they borrowed more than $10tn, right? And yet, we picked up $5.2tn just in the stock market. Possibly picked up the whole thing in terms of the first nine months, in terms of value. So you could say in one sense, we're really increasing values. And maybe in a sense we're reducing debt."

Indeed, the country borrowed a lot of money during the Obama years. Trump is not wrong about that. What Trump is conveniently forgetting, of course, is that the economy was a complete disaster when Obama took over.

The $3 trillion that he has borrowed (and it is actually more than that, because his tax cuts for the wealthy actually will add a lot more) are completely unnecessary, and the product of his desire to double-down on trickle-down, as Bill Clinton would say.

Here are some of the news from when the debt first reached $22 trillion, according to a CBS News report:

The U.S. national debt has topped $22 trillion for the first time in history, according to daily figures released by the Treasury Department on Tuesday.   

The debt has ballooned by more than $2 trillion in the two years since President Trump took office in January 2017, when the debt stood at $19.9 trillion. It surpassed $21 trillion for the first time in history in March 2018. Under the Obama administration, the national debt grew from $10.6 trillion to $19.9 trillion, an increase that drew sharps criticism from Republicans.  

In an interview with the Washington Post in 2016, Mr. Trump vowed to eliminate the national debt "over a period of eight years." Top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who joined the White House after the president said he would eliminate the debt, told CBS News last month Mr. Trump probably didn't mean he would eliminate the debt entirely. 

Three trillion dollars added in three years. That obviously adds up to one trillion per year, and that, unlike Obama, was not during some economic crisis.

What can anyone say?

This is Trump's version of winning.

He promised that we would get used to all of the "winning" once he was president. And if this is his version of winning, then I guess he was right, because most of us really are tired of all of this. 

Here are the links to the articles used in writing this blog entry, and from which I obtained all of the quotes used above:

National debt tops $22 trillion for first time in U.S. history BY KATHRYN WATSON  UPDATED ON: FEBRUARY 12, 2019:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-national-debt-tops-22-trillion-for-first-time-in-history/?fbclid=IwAR0BBqptPnSfmBeoSUFEl-g4LRS1vz8kXX-PnoGGUAO-PZXyENxkKnTZsYM




America is $23 trillion in debt. What that means for your budget PUBLISHED TUE, JAN 14 202010:02 AM ESTUPDATED TUE, JAN 14 202011:27 AM EST Annie Nova @ANNIEREPORTER

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/the-us-is-23-trillion-in-debt-why-that-might-help-your-wallet.html


Donald Trump: Has US debt fallen since the president took office? 12 October 2017

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41596847