The economic downturn has every member of President Donald Trump's administration trotting out the Shaggy defense.
JD Vance ducked direct questions about the flagging economy on Thursday during an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News. Baier, who is not above fudging the facts in favor of Trump, came straight at Vance while discussing a disappointing first quarter.
"The economy shrank – first time in three years. People are pointing to the tariff policy," Baier said. "There are people looking at their 401(k)s that are worried. What do you tell them? Is this going to work?"
Like Trump before him, Vance laid the blame at the feet of former President Joe Biden.
"When you talk about the economy, this is Joe Biden’s economy," Vance said.
Vance went on to echo Trump's belt-tightening talk from recent days.
"We inherited...a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, which fundamentally means we’re not making enough of our own stuff. And that the president came in and he said, ‘This is not always gonna be easy,'" Vance said. "It would’ve been very easy for Donald Trump to do what administrations in the past have done, which is borrow a lot of money and continue fueling the national debt. He said, ‘No. We need a reset. We need American workers to have better jobs.'"
That might be the intent, but many Americans felt that the economy was getting worse in the early days of Trump 2.0. And now, the data backs those bad vibes up. The U.S. economy shrank by 0.3% per the Department of Commerce, with most metrics showing that the wider economy either slowed down or contracted.
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