Donald J. Trump: The King of Debt Redux

Things have surely gone to hell in a hand basket when you have no choice except to vote for a presidential candidate who is an incorrigible economic ignoramus; and especially when his obliviousness to the soaring public debt makes a mockery of the everything the GOP has stood for lo these many decades since FDR started America down the primrose path to fiscal catastrophe.

Yet, here is the Donald’s latest expostulation of sheer humbug on the topic of how the nation’s current inflationary mess materialized:

• “I had four years, no inflation. Biden, who has no idea where the hell he is, went 2 years with no inflation because he inherited from me. Then they started spending money like drunken sailors.”

Well, no, Donald. You were the chief drunken sailor—topping all your predecessors by a country mile. Spending grew by the staggering sum of $1.13 trillion in 2020 or by nearly 25%. Even in percentage terms that was far more than LBJ, Jimmy Carter or Barrack Obama.

Y/Y Federal Spending Growth, 1953 to 2023

For want of doubt, here is the annualized rate of Federal spending during Trump’s final quarters and under Harris-Biden. The fact is, the Donald pushed up Federal spending from an annualized rate of about $4.8 trillion per year to nearly $9 trillion in Q2 2020. And then the UniParty Dems under Harris-Biden were pleased to keep it a couple of trillion per year below the Donald’s peak level and call it a prudent movement toward “deficit reduction” with spending at $6.9 trillion in Q2 2024

Obviously, there was nothing prudent about it, but neither did spending like a “drunken sailor” breakout under Harris-Biden. The Donald took care of that well before November 2020, as is evident in the graph below.

Annualized Rate of Federal Spending, Q1 2020 to Q2 2024

And, no, “the COVID made him do it” excuse doesn’t wash, either. Any president with a decent regard for constitutional liberty and property rights would have never, ever ordered the Lockdowns and unleashed the likes of Dr. Fauci and the Scarf Lady in response to a contagion that was not a mortal threat to 95% of the public.