Because the economy dominates people’s thoughts along these lines, and until the pandemic, the economy under Trump was pretty good, at least in the ways we measure these things. Let’s start with the most basic measure, jobs. In Barack Obama’s last two years, about 5.18 million jobs were created, according to these BLS numbers. In Trump’s first two years, that number was about 4.51 million. Not as good, but still very good in historical terms, and certainly not the disaster liberals were warning about.
Pre-pandemic GDP growth under Trump was also good—not the crazy 5, 6 percent he bragged about as a candidate, but in the 2.2 to 3.0 range. Trump’s 2.5 average in his first three years bested Obama’s 2.2 post-meltdown average (i.e., if we’re not counting the pandemic against Trump here, then we also shouldn’t count the great meltdown against Obama).
The stock market? It did well in Obama’s last three years, climbing from 16,458 to 19,827 on the day Trump was inaugurated. But in Trump’s first three years, it went from that number all the way up to 29,348 in January 2020, before the pandemic.