Obama Claims Trump’s Economy ‘Was My Economy’

 Former President Barack Obama argued on Thursday that the economy under the Trump administration was only good because former President Donald Trump inherited Obama’s economy.

Obama made the comment while stumping for Vice President Kamala Harris in Pittsburgh, the first stop on his battleground state “blitz” for the Democratic nominee.

“The reason some people think, ‘I remember that economy when [Trump] first came in being pretty good.’ — Yeah, it was pretty good because it was my economy,” Obama told the crowd of Harris supporters. “We had 75 straight months of job growth that I handed over to him. It wasn’t something he did.”

Obama then ripped former President George W. Bush’s administration, saying, “I had spent eight years cleaning up the mess that the Republicans had left me the last time.”

Conservatives blasted Obama on social media for attempting to take credit for the economy under Trump.

“So then by that logic Joe Biden’s supposedly amazing economy is Trump’s. This idiotic sword cuts both ways,” wrote Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro.

The Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway added, “In fact, the Obama economy was *notoriously* sluggish and a big reason why Trump won [the] election the first time.”

Hemingway’s husband, Mark — a senior writer at RealClearInvestigations — wrote, “GDP growth in Obama’s last year in office was 1.6%. Trump did not inherit a good economy. This is delusional.”

From the first quarter of 2015 to the fourth quarter of 2015, the GDP growth rate dropped from 3.7% to 0.7%. GDP bounced back slightly in Obama’s last year in office, and Trump took over with a 2% growth rate in the first quarter of 2017. In Trump’s first full year in office, GDP growth jumped to 4%. It reached a high of 4.8% in 2019 before the COVID pandemic lockdowns shuttered the economy.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump has focused much of his attention on the economy, blasting the Biden-Harris administration’s record on the issue. Voters also list the economy and inflation, which reached 9.1% under President Joe Biden, as the top issues heading into the election.

At a town hall event in Michigan, a vital swing state, last month, Trump was asked how he would “bring down the cost of food and groceries” as many families struggle to pay their bills.

“We have to start always with energy,” Trump replied. “I don’t want to be boring about it, but there’s no bigger subject that covers everything. If you make donuts, if you make cars, whatever you make, energy is a big deal.”

“And it’s my ambition to get your energy bill within 12 months down 50%,” he added. “If I can do that, we’ve done a hell of a job … [and] interest rates are going to follow.”

Harris has also focused on addressing Americans’ economic woes during her campaign and has largely blamed corporate greed for a rise in prices. In August, Harris proposed “the first-ever federal ban on corporate price-gouging,” a policy that was compared to Soviet-style price controls on food.