Political Irony

© Jeff Stahler

What? He didn’t blame it on Obama?

© Matt Wuerker

Are voters finally getting tired of Donald Trump? It was fun while it lasted, but it might have just been a summer fling.

UPDATE: During Trump’s presidential announcement speech, he attacked the performance of the US economy under president Obama, saying, “The last quarter, it was just announced, our gross domestic product — a sign of strength, right? But not for us. It was below zero. Who ever heard of this? It’s never below zero.”

Well, he got one thing right: The GDP is never below zero. Last quarter, as usual, it was in the trillions of dollars. What Trump meant to refer to was that the growth in GDP was below zero. So let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he simply misspoke.

Unfortunately for Trump, even then he lied. GDP goes up and down all the time. For example, it goes up for the Christmas holiday buying spurt and then goes down in the following winter quarter pretty much every year, which is why the government “seasonally adjusts” the figure (and Trump was talking about numbers for the first quarter). But even if you use the seasonally adjusted number, quarterly GDP growth has gone negative 15% of the time since they started tracking it in 1947.

Lately, the winters have been unusually harsh, causing the winter quarter to decline even more than normal, but it is hypocritical to blame this on a president who is fighting strong opposition from Republicans to fight climate change. Oh, and if you are going to be blaming economic cycles on the president, then you should note that of the 42 quarters of negative growth since WWII, 30 of them occurred under Republican presidents and only 12 under Democratic presidents.

By any measure, even giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, Trump lied. In fact, Trump has never received a “True” rating from PolitiFact.

‘Donald Trump went on a rant about how horrible socialism is. But you know what, isn’t Trump’s hair socialism? It’s the richer hair covering the poorer hair for the good of the head.’ – Bill Maher

“Donald Trump is now saying that his immigration policies would have prevented 9/11. Trump is also claiming his hair would have kept the Titanic afloat.” – Conan O’Brien

“Jeb Bush’s campaign announced yesterday that it raised over $13 million last quarter, which means it’s doing better than most of the other major campaigns. Or as Jeb put it, ‘Crap. What do I gotta do to lose this thing?!'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Jeb Bush’s campaign has a contest now where someone will be flown to Houston to meet him, his dad, and his brother. No word on what the winner gets.” – Conan O’Brien

“Actually, I saw that Jeb Bush’s campaign has been staying at cheaper hotels to save money. Which would make Jeb the first politician ever to book a room at a cheap motel just to sleep.” – Jimmy Fallon

“At the debate on Tuesday Democratic candidate Lincoln Chafee bragged about the fact that in 30 years of public service, he’s never had one scandal. Well, it just came out that Chafee once used taxpayer money to buy frogs for his office aquarium. People said, ‘Well at least it wasn’t a sex scandal.’ And Chafee said, ‘Riiiight…'” – Jimmy Fallon

“A high school student hacked the AOL email account of John Brennan, the director of the CIA. In other words, the student correctly guessed that the password of anyone still using AOL is ‘password’.” – Conan O’Brien

“While accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Eddie Murphy did a Bill Cosby impression. Murphy’s Cosby impression was so accurate, nine women are suing him.” – Conan O’Brien

“A study found that one of the most popular searches during the debate was, ‘Is Bernie Sanders Jewish?’ While the most popular response on Google was, ‘Come on’.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders was on ‘Ellen’ today. A lot of people, myself included, said Bernie Sanders doesn’t have the style or the charisma to be president. But he came out dancing on ‘Ellen’. I think we owe him an apology.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“CNN’s Wolf Blitzer told Democratic presidential hopeful Lincoln Chafee yesterday that he is going to wind up looking silly if he stays in the race. And let’s face it, also if he doesn’t. Chafee then told Blitzer that he’ll remain in the race as long as he can continue to raise important issues. And you know he’s got a point. I mean, literally, he’s got one point.” – Seth Meyers

“Analysts are saying that Joe Biden was actually the biggest loser in the debate, and that he missed his chance to enter the race. Yeah, they said entering now would be awkward and inappropriate – or as Biden put it, ‘Those are my two middle names! I’m in!'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Now that the dust has settled from the Democratic debate, it looks like Hillary Clinton is going to remain the Democratic front-runner. And believe it or not over on the Republican side, Donald Trump is still in the lead. And now Trump is saying that he should be given Secret Service protection. As opposed to his current security: having Gary Busey follow him around with some nunchucks.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Donald Trump is reportedly threatening to pull out of the next GOP debate unless CNBC reinstates opening and closing statements. And Lincoln Chafee is threatening to pull out of the next Democratic debate if there are going to be questions.” – Seth Meyers

“Donald Trump’s son said in an interview last night that everything his dad has ever touched has turned to gold. Well, not everything. Jeb’s still waiting to turn to gold.” – Seth Meyers

“New research shows that China has a bigger middle class than America, and more people in China are living what we would call the ‘American Dream’. That’s when you know things are bad – when even the American DREAM is made in China.” – Jimmy Fallon

“After speculation that he may enter the Democratic debate at the last minute, Joe Biden ended up not coming. Biden said he thought about showing up, but at the end of the day, his head was stuck in a banister.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Sheryl Crow performed the National Anthem before last night’s debate, but many Twitter users were unhappy with her performance. Mostly because they thought the National Anthem was Uptown Funk.” – Seth Meyers

“Sheryl Crow performed the National Anthem at last night’s debate, but it looked like Martin O’Malley was the only one actually singing along. In fairness, there’s nothing more American than just PRETENDING you know the National Anthem.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Turned out it was the highest-rated debate for the Democrats ever. More than 15 million people tuned in to watch Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and the three high school principals they invited to fill out the stage.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“It was a big night for Bernie Sanders. He talked about his views on war, and said that he strongly opposed it when he was a young man. Even crazier, he was talking about the TROJAN War.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Sanders supporters pointed to the fact that Bernie was the most googled of all the candidates during the debate. Sounds like a big thing until you realize the top questions they googled included, ‘who is Bernie Sanders?’ and, ‘is Bernie Sanders Jewish?'” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Anderson Cooper tried to make a case that Bernie Sanders isn’t electable because he calls himself a socialist. I think that’s the least of his problems. I think he isn’t electable because he calls himself Bernie.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Moderator Anderson Cooper asked Lincoln Chafee why he switched parties from being a Republican, and Chafee called himself a ‘block of granite.’ When asked what he meant by that, Chafee said, ‘I meant that I’d make a better countertop than president.” – Jimmy Fallon

“During the debate, the candidates mentioned the middle class eleven times. Once for each remaining member of the middle class.” – Seth Meyers

“Most of the experts, they rate these things afterwards. Most of the experts thought Hillary won the debate, although some said Bernie Sanders won. No one said any of the others won, not even them.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Donald Trump was live tweeting the debate last night. This morning he told ABC News he thought Clinton got through it ‘fine’. Which is the highest compliment he can give a woman without marrying her.” – Jimmy Kimmel