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  • 2017-02-27 (xsd:date)
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  • 'Media Silence' on $12B Reduction to the National Debt During Trump’s First Month? (en)
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  • On 25 February 2017, President Donald Trump tweeted to complain that the news media were not reporting his success in reducing the national debt during his first month in office: As noted by news media from the Los Angeles Times to the Washington Post, the tweet appeared closely after a Fox & Friends segment in which guest (and former presidential candidate) Herman Cain reported the same numbers. That story appeared to have its origins in a post on the conservative blog Gateway Pundit (Amazing! Trump Cuts US Debt by $12 Billion In His First Month) which took credit for the Trump tweet in an update to their story. There are two claims implicit in the tweet. The first claim is simply the factual nature of the figures reported. The second is that the numbers represent an item worthy of coverage. The numbers are factual in a literal sense, according to the online debt history search application offered by the US Treasury Department: Though the numbers regarding the debt at the end of Trump’s and President Obama’s first month are factual, their significance as a reportable bit of information or as an indicator of the impact or success of Trump’s policies is questionable. Speaking to CBS News, Maya MacGuineas, director of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget, said: Indeed, in terms of newsworthiness (or lack thereof), sporadic reductions of the debt are not uncommon (in red, below) on a month-to-month basis, according to The Monthly Statement of the Public Debt of the United States reports released during the course of President Obama's second term in office: In fact, the Washington Post’s Wonkblog reports that, even on a day-to-day basis, fluctuations even greater than the one Trump referenced are not unheard of: Secondly, there are few mechanisms by which any actions Trump has taken as president would affect the national debt thus far, as he has not signed into law any financial measures related to federal borrowing. While there are arguments to be made that other factors related to Trump’s presidency could affect the debt, the Post has said it is unlikely, and also impossible to quantify: Keith Hennessey, a former director of the U.S. National Economic Council appointed by George W. Bush, wrote a hypothetical memo to Congress analyzing the 45th President’s tweet. In this document, he stated that neither Obama nor Trump had any effect on the national debt in their first month in office: Hennessey added that it is equally unfair to compare the 2009 economic situation with the 2017 one: More to the point, however, the fact that the day-to-day and month-to-month fluctuations of the national debt are so volatile, he argued, is why analysts don’t typically look at the data for these time periods, accordingo to Hennessey: It should also be noted that, as the Fox and Friends segment aired on one of the nation’s most popular national cable news networks, the media did indeed report on this story. The reason it didn’t pick up much steam is that the numbers were not newsworthy because they were taken out of context and are likely irrelevant to President Trump's actions in office. (en)
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