Pants on fire

To the editor:

A recent letter states we were better off under Donald Trump and makes several claims to support this hypothesis. 

Claim: under Trump "the highest employment and lowest unemployment numbers in history.” Fact: Trump lost 2.7 million jobs while in office — 145,636,000 employed January, 2017 vs 142,916,000 employed January 2021 and unemployment rising from 4.7 percent to 6.4 percent.  Under Joe Biden, employment is up 15.37 million jobs (142,916,000 vs 158,286,000) and unemployment has remained at or below 4 percent since December 2021, 29 straight months, something not seen since the 1960s. This information is readily available on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website.

Claim: Trump was “making the U.S. energy independent.” Fact: total U.S. oil imports during Trump’s first three years were 8,226,493,000 barrels and average domestic oil production was 10,873,000 barrels/day. Under Biden, three-year oil imports were 6,888,715,000 barrels with daily domestic production averaging 12,035,000 barrels. That equates to a 16-percent reduction in imported oil and 10.7 percent increase in domestic production (source, eia.gov).

Claim: “Biden crashed the housing market with higher mortgage rates.” To begin with, presidents have no power over interest rates; that authority lies solely with the Federal Reserve. In any case, home prices rose 4.8 percent year-over-year in March 2024, according to Realtor network Redfin and the housing price index is at an all-time high, per the Fed. Not exactly a crash; that honor belongs to George W. Bush.

Unsubstantiated claims, no matter how strongly stated, aren’t facts. Facts are facts and they can be found if you do the hard work of looking, rather than taking the word of liars, like Donald Trump, at face value.

Joseph Cannisi