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The campaign stops where Donald Trump addresses the economy continue to produce some of his most confounding quotes of the election cycle while exposing his ignorance about elementary topics.
Reminiscent of his nonsensical statistics at a recent campaign event at Bedminster, N.J., and his struggle with scientific concepts like "wind" in another ostensibly economics-focused speech in North Carolina weeks ago, Trump’s tenuous grasp of basic math and science was on full display Thursday during campaign stops in Wisconsin and Michigan.
At a Wisconsin town hall, for example, Trump baselessly associated a reliance on wind power with people eating less bacon these days. The quote speaks for itself: “You take a look at bacon and some of these products. Some people don't eat bacon anymore. And we are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down — you know, this was caused by their horrible energy — wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn't blow, we have a little problem.” I don't know how you can even fact-check a tangent like that.
At that same event, Trump repeated the xenophobic lie that immigrants have accounted for more than 100% — 107%, he claimed — of job growth during the Biden administration, despite that not being how math works.
In Michigan — in a speech billed as specifically focused on the economy — Trump repeated another lie about abortion, claiming six states allow doctors to kill babies after birth, including Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s Minnesota. As has been noted in the past, killing a baby after birth is literally not abortion —it’s infanticide, which is illegal in every single state.
And in this same speech, Trump returned to his attacks on Algerian boxer and Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif, who faced a right-wing smear campaign by Trump and others who accused her of not being a woman. In the speech, Trump alluded to Khelif, alleging that two trans women had unfairly competed in boxing at the Olympics and won gold — a blatant lie. In reality, there were no trans women competing in the Olympics at all, and claims to the contrary about Khelif largely stemmed from a dubious, unverified test in 2023 by a controversial Russian-led boxing organization.
You might be wondering: What does any of this have to do with the economy? That’s the thing: It doesn’t. Trump can’t seem to help himself, though. When he talks about the economy, he often disregards basic facts or rambles dishonestly about other topics swirling around in his head.
Trump has every reason to give actual speeches focused on the economy. Despite the economy tanking in his last year as president (largely due to the pandemic), he’s still benefited from Americans’ historic bias favoring conservatives on economic issues. But recent data suggests Harris has been creeping up on him in that regard.
So theoretically, now would be a good time for Trump to offer focused, sane messaging on the economy, instead of rattling off bizarre lies about bacon, abortion, wind and trans people. The self-proclaimed stable genius fails to convince yet again.