What would we do without economists? “Unexpected” good news about the economy is getting too obvious to ignore, so the next phase of denial has been unleashed. The Times ran a sneering story yesterday headlined, “Trump Credits ‘Mister Tariff’ for the Country’s Strength. Economists Beg to Differ.”
Why anyone listens to economists at this point is a mystery for the ages. But never mind.
According to the Times’ economic experts, the nation’s booming economy is just a coincidence and has nothing whatever to do with Trump’s policies. First, the good news: “The construction of vast data centers,” the Times admitted, “is boosting investment, while soaring A.I. stocks are making Americans who invested in the stock market richer, encouraging more spending on goods and services.”
Not just AI data center construction (which, of course, is a keystone Trump policy). “New tax deductions that were signed into law last year are also encouraging investment.” The bulbs are switching green across the board. “In recent months,” the article conceded, “the trade deficit has shrunk dramatically, in October hitting the lowest level since 2009. The drop in imports buoyed U.S. gross domestic product in the third quarter and has pushed up estimates for fourth-quarter GDP.”
But don’t start popping the champagne yet. The Times isn’t ready to concede any credit to President Trump.
“It has nothing to do with trade,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, scoffed. Harvard economist and former IMF director Gita Gopinath sneered that economists predicting tariff doom were right all along, but that the A.I. boom had “basically offset the drag from tariffs.”
Wait. It has nothing to do with trade? Or maybe it’s that the “booming economy” has something to do with the fact that we have a president who is constantly encouraging investment, trade, and business? For example, Trump yesterday:
Or … nah? It’s all just AI data center construction? That silly excuse without evidence is what the Times’ cherry-picked experts would like us all to believe. Just trust us.
It needn’t be said, but the Times couldn’t find any pro-tariff experts to quote. Not a single one.
🔥 When reading this type of ‘news’ critically, balance is the first thing you should look for. Here’s the formula: the articles report a scrap of actual news (e.g., the economy is booming), and then round up several “experts” to tell readers what to think about the news.
If the “expert” portion of the story is unbalanced, then you are reading propaganda, not news. Corporate media uses experts to publish its own opinions —its bias— while hiding in the bushes behind the carefully curated people who all magically agree with its perspective. By publishing a totally lopsided group of voices, the reporter hopes to fool the reader into assuming expert “consensus” exists— without ever having to explicitly make that dubious argument.
Assuming you are masochistic enough to consume corporate media’s articles, when reading this type of piece, always first ask: “do all the quoted sources agree with each other, and varying expert opinions are conspicuously absent?” If so, you can safely ignore all the quotes and focus just on the factual reporting of what actually happened.
Believe it or not, this kind of reporting is what is most responsible for killing legacy media and driving people to social media for news. On social media, folks actually find the diversity of voices and opinions that is lacking in contemporary corporate media. Even allowing for all the noise of misinformation, outright lies, silliness, and unintelligent commentary, Twitter’s “town square” beats whatever the Times is serving up.
At least the bias is obvious on Twitter/X, which is all anybody asked for anyway.
It would be trivially easy for big news publishers like the Times to give readers right-click access to quoted experts’ biographies, previous comments, publication history, and political donation records. But they don’t. Think about that. And think about the claim that publications like the Times allegedly exist to “inform” us.
If its under Democrat and Inflation its Good in the minds of the M.S. Media when its under a Republican and Deflation its Bad we all know how much the leftists M.S. Media distort the whole thing