Why Trump Thinks Democrats Will Sabotage the Economy

Jonathan Chait: “The professions of confidence by Trump and his supporters that no recession is at hand is belied by their own behavior — especially Trump’s frantic attempts to pressure the Federal Reserve into loosening its monetary policy, along with the president’s renewed interest in cutting payroll taxes as stimulus. It’s also belied by a fair amount of data.”

“But more curious than the right’s insistence that a recession won’t occur is its certainty that Democrats — working through their agents in the Fake News, naturally — are engineering one. Why would the right imagine such sinister motives? Perhaps the answer is that this is precisely how Republicans behaved in the opposition.”

“After Obama took office, the entire Republican legislative calculus revolved around the premise that Republicans were engaged in zero-sum competition — anything that helped Obama pass a stimulus bill hurt their party… Throughout Obama’s presidency, Republicans not only demanded contractionary fiscal and monetary policy but staged a series of dangerous showdowns in order to force Obama to accept it.”