https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/11/radio-dave-ramsey-2018-trump-217229 It’s a small sample size, but every visitor I met at Ramsey’s studio was from a red state—and most are Trump supporters. The president, of course, is a debt-wielding businessman who sent his companies into bankruptcy six times; one struggles to imagine the snowball approach applied to Trump’s onetime casino empire, or the Ramsey rant that a caller with those problems might have triggered. Yet people who admire Ramsey, who have bought into his message of self-reliance and frugality, also gravitated toward the messianic, I-can-fix-it economic promises of a billionaire whose administration has embraced increased spending and deeper national debt.
That worries Ramsey—not because of Trump per se, but because of what it says about the Americans counting on his help. “This idea that I’m going to get elected—senator or congressman or president or governor—and jobs are going to increase, and you’re going to get a job, your life is going to be fixed if you elect me, is by and large patently untrue. It’s a lie. It’s the oldest lie in politics,†Ramsey says. “This idea that a President Obama or a President Trump can take credit for jobs being created is laughable. If I’m a person who watches too much news, I start to think these guys are going to fix my life for me—and when they don’t, I feel stuck.â€
Ramsey says a handful of GOP presidential candidates reached out in 2016 to solicit advice. Rick Santorum asked him over dinner what he wanted to see the next president do to help the economy, Ramsey says. His response: “As little as possible.â€
Thinking back to conversations with voters during the “revolutionary†elections of 2008 and 2016, Ramsey believes the victories of Obama and Trump were driven by similar if ideologically distinct strands of economic insecurity. The commonality was a belief among the candidates’ bases—one Ramsey confronted daily on air—that new political leaders would change their lives. “The last two presidents were both elected on it. And neither one of them can deliver it, because they don’t have the capability,†he says. “The office does not have that much power.â€
more at link
Does it matter if both Obama and Trump claim credit for the great economy evidenced by administration departments? Only if you think there is a difference between the two administration. Only if you naively believe either is telling you the truth.
