Trump Uses Fake Quote to Slam Obama
President Donald Trump invented a quote to slam former President Barack Obama on Monday while touting his own economic achievements.
“President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP,” stated President Obama. I guess I have a magic wand, 4.2%, and we will do MUCH better than this! We have just begun.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2018
The quote that Trump attributed to Obama, however, does not appear to exist.
Obama referred to a magic wand at a PBS town hall in 2016, when criticizing Trump’s claims about bringing back jobs:
“Well, how exactly are you going to do that? What exactly are you going to do? There’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, what, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is, he doesn’t have an answer.”
Trump’s fabricated Obama quote appears to be based on a Fox News segment that aired a few minutes before his tweet. While discussing Obama’s effort to take credit for the strong economy under Trump, Washington Free Beacon writer Elizabeth Harrington said that during the 2016 election, Obama “said that Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% growth.”
OUR A-TEAM: @wjmcgurn @JMfreespeech @LizWFB discussed former President Obama criticizing President Trump #nine2noon pic.twitter.com/jcrt2uAssn
— America's Newsroom (@AmericaNewsroom) September 10, 2018
Obama’s comment actually referred to unemployment, not GDP growth.
[Mediaite]