Donald Trump said more than a few ridiculous things in his remarks today to the Economic Club of New York, but the president’s claim about one of his adult children was especially jarring.
President Trump claimed Tuesday that his daughter Ivanka Trump — who is also a White House senior adviser — has created 14 million jobs, according to Mediaite. “My daughter Ivanka, that’s all she wants to talk about… she wants to make these people have great lives. And when she started this, two and half years ago, her goal was 500,000 jobs,” the president said at the Economic Club of New York while discussing the administration’s “Pledge to America’s Workers.”
“She has now created 14 million jobs and they are being trained by these great companies, the greatest companies in the world, because the government cannot train them. It’s a great thing.”
If you watch the video clip, note that the president repeated the line more than once — and then promoted it on Twitter.
If true, this would be quite an accomplishment for the president’s adult daughter, wouldn’t it? Donald Trump has already tasked Ivanka Trump for playing key roles in international diplomacy, and he’s considered her for powerful positions, including posts at the World Bank and the United Nations.
What we didn’t know is that, in addition to these other areas of her portfolio, the young White House official also managed “create 14 million jobs,” apparently very quickly.
If true, that would be quite an accomplishment. In reality, however, the claim is not to be taken seriously.
According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Donald Trump has been in office for 33 full months, during which time the economy has created 6.25 million jobs. That’s pretty good, though it’s a significant decline as compared to the final 33 months of Barack Obama’s presidency.
But to hear the Republican tell it, while he wants credit for creating 6.25 million jobs, he wants his daughter to receive credit for creating 14 million jobs — more than double that of his entire presidency.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because the president made a similar boast in February, telling the nation’s governors, “My daughter has created millions of jobs. I don’t know if anyone knows that, but she’s created millions of jobs.”
Now, he’s even more specific: “millions of jobs” has become “14 million jobs.” I shudder to think where the made-up number will be next year.
What Ivanka Trump actually did was help launch a “Pledge to America’s Workers” initiative in which many companies pledged to help train workers over the course of several years. That’s a worthwhile thing to do, but evidence of actual training is, at least at this point, rather thin, and none of this has anything to do with millions of jobs having been created by the effort.
What the president doesn’t seem to understand is that implausible lies with no grounding in reality are literally unbelievable.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."