President Donald Trump recently gave an interview with the Economist in which he made some interesting claims and again changed his reasoning for not releasing his tax returns.
His first claim was that he personally coined the phrase ‘priming the pump.’ After using that phrase, he stated: “Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.”
In fact, that expression has been in use in regards to the economy and government spending since the 1930’s. It is surprising that Trump was unaware of that since he holds a degree in economics.
After the strange exchange with the interviewer in which he made that claim, Trump moved on to talking about his relationship with the President of China. He claimed that President Xi Jinping is “great” several times. He also stated that they have a good relationship.
Trump then made false claims about his role in ending currency manipulation by China. Those claims have been disproven in the past. Despite the fact that the claims are false, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin chose to agree with Trump on that point.
Once Trump was finished with discussing those false claims, he decided to contradict the official narrative regarding his tax returns. When questioned about releasing his tax returns when the audit is over, Trump replied: “I might release them after I’m out of office.” That is a strange thing for him to say given his previous claims regarding his tax returns. He has repeated in the past that the only reason he was not able to release his tax returns was that they were under audit and he was not allowed to do so.
Finally, Trump went on to discuss NAFTA in his typically obtuse way. The interviewer asked Trump what a fair NAFTA would look like. Trump responded: “Big isn’t a good enough word. Massive.” He claimed that they would terminate NAFTA otherwise. Trump was unable to explain what he meant by “massive” or say anything meaningful about what he thinks a fair NAFTA should look like.