Trump’s Economy Is Stronger Than Voters Think | Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson opened a recent episode of his podcast with a pointed observation: the Wall Street Journal had finally run an article acknowledging that the economy is booming. For Hanson, this was not a surprise but a confirmation. He had been arguing for months that the economic data—record-low poverty, rising incomes, strong GDP growth—told a story the media had refused to report. The central question of the conversation was whether voters would recognize this reality before the election, or whether the narrative of economic despair had already done its damage.

The Economy Was Never as Bad as the Headlines

Hanson’s argument rests on a straightforward framework: the economy under the current administration has been strong by every objective measure, but the public has been misled by a press that refuses to acknowledge improvement. He pointed to the Federal Reserve’s revision of third-quarter growth to five percent, the lowest poverty rate in history, record-high familial and per capita income, and unemployment at 4.2 percent. The stock market, he noted, was on track for about ten percent growth for the year. These numbers, he argued, are not ambiguous.