Ministry Of Truth

Have you ever watched someone insist you didn’t just see what you definitely saw? In Ministry of Truth, Steve Benen argues that today’s Republican Party has built a full-spectrum campaign to do exactly that: to overwrite your memory of recent events with tidy narratives that better serve its political needs. He contends that what looks like ordinary spin is actually something more corrosive—an organized war on the recent past—executed with a propagandist’s discipline and an authoritarian’s indifference to evidence.

The Core Argument

Benen’s central claim is straightforward and unsettling: Republicans aren’t merely putting favorable gloss on messy episodes; they are replacing what happened with new stories, then reinforcing those stories until they stick. The method rests on four pillars he documents across chapters: a studied indifference to reality, the absence of shame, a powerful network of partisan allies (notably Fox News and a sprawling right-wing media ecosystem), and relentless repetition (a point propaganda scholars such as A. J. Mackenzie highlighted as far back as 1938). Together, these pillars allow leaders to steamroll facts—even ones you personally witnessed—and install alternate versions as the new common sense.

This is not history as harmless nostalgia. Benen shows how, in case after case—from the Russia scandal to the 2020 election, from the January 6 attack to Trump’s Ukraine extortion, from the border wall to Covid and the economy—rewrites were used to block accountability, distort policy, and normalize behavior that would have once ended political careers. The result, he argues, has been a degraded public square where shared reality collapses and democracy itself grows brittle (a warning echoed by historians like Timothy Snyder and political theorists like Hannah Arendt).

Why This Matters Now

As you approach elections or assess leaders, you rely on a simple civic toolset: facts, records, memory, and the lessons of lived experience. Benen’s contention is that these are precisely the tools under attack. The party’s edits to the recent past make governance worse in the present. He shows how the bogus IRS “scandal” (debunked by multiple investigations) was later used to block routine tax enforcement in an infrastructure deal, and how the Big Lie about 2020 seeded new law-enforcement “voter fraud” units that found virtually no systemic problems but did intimidate voters (as AP later reported). Misinformation isn’t just rhetorical; it produces real-world costs and policies.

What You’ll See in This Summary

You’ll start by learning the GOP’s playbook for altering memory, then revisit what actually happened in the cases most aggressively rewritten: the Russia probe (and the Barr and Durham after-stories), the prewritten and then post-written Big Lie about the 2020 election, and the conversion of a violent insurrection into a tale of “tourists” and “political prisoners.” You’ll see how Trump’s “perfect phone call” to Ukraine was documented, corroborated, and even deemed unlawful by the Government Accountability Office—and then treated as a partisan mirage the party now seeks to “expunge.” We’ll walk the border wall fantasy (promises, physics, and financing) alongside the mythologized Covid response and the endlessly repeated “greatest economy in history” claim, measured against the data.

The Editing Suite: From Reality TV to Real Politics

Benen closes with a parable from Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice. When Trump fired the “wrong” contestant, producers would comb footage to assemble an after-the-fact justification—what one called an “artificial version of history.” He argues the GOP now applies that same retroactive narrative construction to politics: pick the ending that helps, then backfill the story. You saw it when Attorney General Bill Barr front-ran the Mueller findings with a misleading summary; when Tucker Carlson handpicked quiet clips from Capitol CCTV to call rioters “sightseers”; and when Republican leaders now move to literally erase impeachments from the record. Trump himself summarized the tactic in a social post: “With time, people forget!”

Essential Command

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” (George Orwell, 1984—quoted by Benen to frame the book’s stakes.)

How to Use This

As you read, test your own memory against the rewrites. You watched the inauguration crowd, the rallies, the briefings, the videos on January 6. Benen isn’t asking you to accept his partisan framing; he’s pointing you back to documentary record, Republican-led investigations (like the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russia), audio of Trump’s own words (to Bob Woodward about Covid; on the White House lawn urging Ukraine and China to probe the Bidens), and formal findings (like GAO ruling the Ukraine hold unlawful). The value for you is practical: once you recognize the moves—indifference to reality, shamelessness, allied megaphones, rote repetition—you can stop them from hijacking your memory and your vote.

Benen opens by decoding a method, not a moment. If you understand the GOP’s playbook, you can spot the pattern anywhere it appears: take what happened, write a more helpful plot, and then repeat it—with the volume turned up—until it feels like truth. The moves show up so consistently they can serve as a checklist for you.

1) Indifference to Reality

The first step is choosing not to care if the record contradicts the narrative. On day one, Trump insisted the inauguration crowd was the largest ever—two days after photos showed vast empty spaces. When fact-checkers produced aerial shots and transit data, the response wasn’t recalibration but reiteration. The point wasn’t to win the fact; it was to win your allegiance to a version of events detached from evidence.

2) Absence of Shame

Rewriting recent history requires a straight face. That’s why the most brazen claims (a “perfect” Ukraine call; a “virtually gone” pandemic; a “finished” wall) are presented with maximal confidence. Benen argues shame would be a speed bump, so the tactic insists on none. When a narrative collapses—say, the claim that Antifa was behind January 6—new ones spring up (“patriots,” “hostages”) without any embarrassment about the contradiction.

3) Allies and Information Bubbles

No one person can rewrite recent history at scale; you need megaphones. Fox News and adjacent outlets provide that echo chamber. Consider Speaker Kevin McCarthy handing Tucker Carlson thousands of hours of Capitol footage, which Carlson then cherry-picked to depict “sightseers.” Or the right’s unified amplification of the IRS “weaponization” myth years after GOP-led investigations had debunked it (Inspector General, DOJ, FBI all found no political targeting). The refrain still did its job: later, Republicans cited the myth to block routine IRS enforcement funding in an infrastructure negotiation.

4) Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

As A. J. Mackenzie observed in 1938, successful propaganda is a drumbeat. Trump tweeted “no collusion” like a mantra; “greatest economy” became a verbal tic; “Mexico is paying” surfaced again and again with shifting justifications (USMCA, toll booths, remittances). The goal is not to persuade the skeptical analyst—it’s to create a default script your brain can retrieve on demand.

5) Prewriting the Story

Sometimes the rewrite begins before the event. In June 2020, Trump seeded that the election would be “the most corrupt” in history and refused to promise he’d accept the results. Attorney General Bill Barr floated hypotheticals about foreign countries printing counterfeit mail ballots—a scenario election officials from both parties said was “virtually impossible.” The effect was to build a mental runway: when defeat came, the Big Lie was ready-made.

6) Brute-Force Erasure

When narrative control isn’t enough, erase the record. House leaders now talk about “expunging” Trump’s impeachments as if votes by a constitutional branch can be retroactively annulled. In Florida, new African American history standards suggested enslaved people “developed skills” for “personal benefit,” and the state approved PragerU’s ideologically slanted materials for classrooms. In the Trump White House’s final days, the 1776 Commission released a pamphlet denounced by the American Historical Association as a “cynical” distortion. These aren’t footnotes; they’re attempts to institutionalize the edited past.

7) A Slogan for the Strategy

Benen quotes Trump’s 2023 post: “With time, people forget!” That’s the wager: if you’re bombarded long enough with the new plot—and reminded that “polls are fake,” “truth isn’t truth,” and facts are “in the eye of the beholder”—your grip on what you lived through loosens. (Compare Hannah Arendt’s warning about “organized lying” corroding the ground we stand on.)

What To Watch For

Ask yourself in real time: Is the claim indifferent to documented evidence? Is it delivered without a hint of shame? Is it echoed by an allied media chorus? Is it repeated until dissent feels exhausting? Was it seeded in advance? Are there moves to erase the documentary record?

If you practice that diagnostic, you’ll catch the edit while it’s happening. And once you see the edit, you’re far less likely to accept the “artificial version of history” (as The Apprentice producers once called their post-facto storytelling) in your civic life.

To understand the scope of later rewrites, you first need the facts the GOP has tried to overwrite. Benen walks you through them with receipts gathered by Republicans and Democrats alike.

The Record: Six Core Truths

• Russia attacked the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded the Kremlin ran an expansive operation to influence the outcome.
• Moscow’s aim was to help Trump. The intelligence community and Senate report stated Russia preferred Trump and sought to aid him.
• Trump’s circle had “numerous links” to Russian actors. Special Counsel Robert Mueller documented more than 100 contacts between Russians and at least 14 Trump associates; the Trump campaign sought a Trump Tower Moscow deal during the race while publicly denying ties.
• Paul Manafort shared internal campaign data with a Russian intelligence officer. The GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee described a “direct tie” between senior Trump officials and Russian services.
• Trump repeatedly obstructed the investigation. Mueller detailed at least 10 episodes of potential obstruction; he explicitly testified he did not exonerate Trump.
• The scandal produced real convictions. Trump’s national security adviser, campaign chair, deputy campaign chair, foreign policy adviser, and personal attorney were convicted or pleaded guilty; 13 Russian nationals were indicted.

All of this unfolded while Trump publicly invited Russian help—“Russia, if you’re listening…”—and then sided with Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence in Helsinki. Even Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Republican Dan Coats, later suggested Putin’s government “had something” on Trump.

The Rewrite: Barr, “No Collusion,” and Durham

Before the public saw Mueller’s report, Attorney General Bill Barr released a four-page letter that downplayed obstruction and led Trump to claim “total exoneration.” A federal judge later blasted Barr’s “lack of candor.” When Mueller’s 448 pages arrived, they told a very different story—yet “no collusion” and “no obstruction” had already become mantras.

Years later, John Durham’s probe—launched to investigate the investigators—ended with two failed prosecutions and a report that unearthed no grand conspiracy. Still, Republican senators proclaimed, “It was all a hoax.” Marco Rubio, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee that confirmed Russian hacking, later suggested Democrats had “falsely claimed” Russia hacked the 2016 election—contradicting his own committee’s work.

Why It Stuck

Benen’s point is that the lie worked. Six months into Trump’s term, two-thirds of Republicans rejected that Russia influenced 2016. In 2023, 76% of Republicans misbelieved the Mueller report cleared Trump of wrongdoing. The drumbeat—“Russia hoax”—became a get-out-of-trouble-free phrase that Trump slapped on everything from indictments to fraud suits.

Why It Matters for You

This is not rearview-mirror trivia. Accepting the rewrite normalizes foreign help in U.S. elections. Benen cites Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s shrug that “there’s not a person in this town” who wouldn’t welcome it, and Rudy Giuliani’s “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.” Trump himself said he would “listen” if a foreign country offered dirt. That is a profound shift in basic democratic hygiene—and a preview of the next request for “help.”

Remember This

The Senate Intelligence Committee that detailed the Trump–Russia links was Republican-led. The rewrite had to bury not just facts, but the party’s own official findings.

(Context: For a complementary view, see Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom on Russia’s information warfare and democratic vulnerability.) When someone says “Russia, Russia, Russia,” now you can answer with the footnotes.

The 2020 election wasn’t just contested after the fact; its myth was seeded in advance. Benen shows how the “rigged election” storyline was built before a single ballot was counted, then fortified with expensive—but hidden—research that undercut the claim.

Laying the Track

By June 2020, Trump was calling the coming vote “the most corrupt” in U.S. history and refusing to say he’d accept the outcome. Barr mused—without evidence—about foreign regimes printing fake mail ballots (election officials from both parties called this “virtually impossible”). The point was priming: prepare you to greet any defeat as theft.

After the Ballots

At 2:21 a.m. after Election Day, Trump declared victory and called continued counting “fraud,” then demanded ongoing counts in states where he trailed. GOP leaders echoed him. Texas AG Ken Paxton filed a “bonkers” Supreme Court suit to throw out four battleground states’ results; 17 GOP attorneys general and nearly two-thirds of House Republicans backed it. Giuliani held a surreal press conference that roped in Antifa, Cuba, the Clinton Foundation, even the late Hugo Chávez.

The Receipts Undercutting the Claim

Here’s the part almost never acknowledged in the rewrite: Trump’s team paid for answers. They hired the Berkeley Research Group (about $600,000) and Simpatico Software Systems (about $750,000) to scour fraud allegations—“anything under the sun,” a source said. Both concluded there was no evidence to support the fraud claims and that Biden won legitimately. Trump’s campaign manager, lawyers, DOJ officials, DHS cyber experts, and Bill Barr all told him the same. Barr later testified, “There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”

The Vicious Loop

Despite more than 60 legal losses and a Supreme Court rejection of Paxton’s suit, the narrative thrived in an information loop Benen describes: Republicans spread lies; polls then showed “distrust”; Republicans cited those polls to justify hearings and new restrictions; the loop repeated. Result: in 2021, 19 states passed 33 laws making it harder to vote; several red states launched “election integrity units” that uncovered no systemic fraud but did chill participation.

Why It Still Works on Voters

Two weeks after the race, 70% of Republicans believed Biden only won due to fraud. Nearly three years later, the number barely budged. That misbelief fueled candidate pledges in 2022 to accept results only if they won—turning concession from a democratic norm into an optional tactic. It also turned violent for some: Reuters documented a barrage of threats against election officials and their families, while DHS warned of a “heightened threat environment” fueled by lies.

A Practical Diagnostic

If the people paid to prove the claim—your own researchers, lawyers, and cabinet—say it’s false, and you hide their findings, you are not uncovering fraud; you are manufacturing doubt.

(Context: For a broader treatment of how election delegitimization spreads, see Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy.) For your own media diet, this chapter is your reminder to ask: Who checked? What did they find? Who’s hiding it?

January 6, 2021, seemed impossible to whitewash: a violent attack on the seat of government, in broad daylight, on video. Benen shows how it was nevertheless recast, in stages, for an eager audience.

The Day and the Words

Trump summoned followers to Washington, promised it would be “wild,” then told the Ellipse crowd, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness… We fight like hell.” Rioters erected gallows, chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” and carried a Confederate flag through the Capitol. About 140 officers were injured; five officers who served that day later died. Officer Michael Fanone was dragged into a mob, tased, beaten, and threatened with his own gun.

Rewrite Stage 1: Blame the Left

Within hours, GOP figures—Rep. Matt Gaetz, Fox host Laura Ingraham, and others—floated that Antifa or “fake Trump protesters” were responsible. FBI Director Christopher Wray later testified there was “no evidence” of Antifa involvement.

Rewrite Stage 2: Make Them Patriots

As the Antifa story collapsed, a second tale emerged: the rioters were “peaceful people,” “very fine” patriots, “hugging and kissing” police. Rep. Paul Gosar called them “peaceful patriots”; Rep. Andrew Clyde said if you didn’t know the footage date, you might think it a “normal tourist visit.” Trump later labeled the convicted “J6 hostages” and fundraised for them; he promised pardons if reelected.

Keep Truth at Bay

Republicans filibustered an independent commission modeled on the 9/11 panel, then boycotted the House select committee when two extremists were barred. Speaker Kevin McCarthy later gave Tucker Carlson exclusive access to surveillance video; Carlson’s curated segments featured calm scenes and declared there was no “riot.” Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger called the program’s conclusions “offensive and misleading,” noting the cherry-picked calm moments ignored the violence.

Poll the Damage

The reframing worked with its target audience. By late 2021, two-thirds of Republicans said January 6 was not an attack on the government; by 2023, majorities described it as “legitimate political discourse.” Nearly half of Trump supporters told pollsters they believed the FBI “organized” the attack—a baseless claim advanced by prominent GOP voices.

Judges’ Warnings

Reagan-appointed Judge Royce Lamberth lamented in 2024 that “meritless justifications of criminal activity” had gone mainstream. Judge Amy Berman Jackson called January 6 “the opposite of democracy—it’s tyranny.”

For you, the lesson is to watch the two-step: first deny what happened (Antifa), then romanticize it (patriots), then delegitimize the investigators (sham, witch hunt), and finally try to erase the paper trail (talk of “expunging” impeachment). Each move is designed to pull your memory away from the videos you saw and toward a narrative safe for the movement.

The Ukraine scandal is a case study in how fast facts can be buried under slogans—unless you keep the sequence straight. Benen reconstructs it step by step so you can, too.

The Shakedown

In September 2019, the Washington Post editorial board alleged that Trump had withheld congressionally approved military aid to pressure Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, into investigating Joe Biden. The White House released a call summary the next day that confirmed the core facts. After Zelensky raised defense needs, Trump replied, “I would like you to do us a favor, though,” and asked for probes into the Bidens and 2016-related conspiracy theories. Days earlier, Trump had quietly frozen nearly $400 million in security assistance.

Corroboration Upon Corroboration

Witnesses across government backed the story: Ambassador Gordon Sondland said aid was conditioned on an announcement of investigations; senior diplomat Bill Taylor testified the president was directly involved in leveraging both a White House meeting and security aid; NSC official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was on the call, said it was “improper” and damaging to U.S. policy; NSC official Tim Morrison confirmed the quid pro quo; State Department official David Holmes overheard Trump pressing Sondland in a phone call about “the Bidens.”

Yes, It Was Illegal

The Government Accountability Office determined the hold violated the Impoundment Control Act—“faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted.” In other words, beyond the ethics, there was a statutory breach.

The “No Quid Pro Quo” Becomes “Get Over It”

Faced with mounting testimony, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney admitted at a press briefing that aid was held up over political considerations—“Get over it. We do that all the time.” When reporters called it a confession of a quid pro quo, he said they’d “misunderstood,” then tried to walk it back hours later. The record, including internal emails showing after-the-fact scrambling to justify the hold, told a different story.

The Rewrite and Erasure

Despite the documents, testimony, and GAO ruling, Republicans now call the first impeachment a “sham” and are pushing House resolutions to “expunge” it as if it never happened. Some claim, contrary to the transcript, that Trump never asked Ukraine to investigate Biden; others say even if he did, it didn’t warrant removal. Senator Lamar Alexander captured the latter: the House managers proved their case, he said, but he’d acquit anyway.

The Consequences for You—and Ukraine

Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist, later argued the episode undermined Zelensky in Putin’s eyes. In July 2023, Trump again proposed withholding arms unless investigators handed over “every scrap of evidence” on the “Biden Crime Family”—a reprise of the same leverage logic. The norm has shifted from “don’t extort allies for domestic gain” to “leverage is smart politics.” That puts both your foreign policy and your separation of powers at risk.

Anchor Fact

The GAO—a nonpartisan congressional watchdog—ruled the aid hold unlawful. Any narrative that skips that line is not telling you the story; it’s selling you one.

Few promises were as clear as the wall: a big, beautiful, concrete barrier spanning perhaps 1,000 miles, built fast, stopping drugs and illegal crossings, all paid for by Mexico. Benen tallies the outcomes so you can compare the ad to the product.

Promise vs. Reality

According to DHS data, the Trump administration added roughly 47 miles of new fencing in previously unbarricaded areas; most construction replaced older barriers (some dating to the George H. W. Bush era) with taller bollards. There was no Mexican financing. Yet Trump later insisted he “built 561 miles” and “completed the wall.” When Chris Christie goaded him on Fox—“We paid for every nickel of it; we don’t have the first peso from Mexico”—Trump shot back online that he’d built “almost 500 miles.”

Who Paid? The Shape-Shifting Story

The payment story evolved as each explanation failed. First: a direct Mexican check. Then: Mexico would pay “through reimbursement/other.” Later: USMCA trade benefits would cover it (economists noted trade provisions don’t put cash in the U.S. Treasury). Then: future border toll booths. Then: “redemption” (he apparently meant remittances, which are private transfers and can’t legally fund federal projects). At a CPAC speech, Trump repeated “They’re paying for it” as if repetition could mint pesos.

Physics, Weather, and Hardware

Meanwhile, reality tested the product. Panels blew over in California with 37-mph gusts. Floods in Arizona ripped hinges off gates. Smugglers used $100 reciprocating saws to cut through bollards; Customs and Border Protection maintenance records obtained by the Washington Post showed 3,272 breaches in three years. Smugglers disguised cuts with tinted putty to reuse them—an unintended “EZ-Pass” lane rather than an impenetrable barrier.

Why It Still Wins in Polls

Despite the record, Republicans successfully reframed the wall as a symbol of order. By October 2023, 91% of GOP voters supported building it. Candidates who once mocked the idea (e.g., Nikki Haley, Chris Christie) now promise to “finish what we started.” The narrative needed neither a working design nor actual financing to become orthodoxy; it needed only a story strong enough to survive facts.

Your Checklist

Ask: How many new miles? Who actually paid? What do maintenance logs show? If you can’t get concrete answers, you’re being asked to salute a symbol, not audit a project.

(Context: For policy substance on border management, compare to bipartisan proposals emphasizing ports-of-entry technology and asylum processing capacity rather than monolithic barriers.)

Covid tested not just public health but public honesty. Benen shows how Trump’s private admissions, public statements, and governing choices diverged—and how the aftermath was narrated to flatter failure.

What He Knew—and Said

On February 7, 2020, Trump told Bob Woodward the virus was airborne and “more deadly than even your strenuous flu.” National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien had warned it would be his biggest threat. Yet publicly, Trump compared it to the flu, then admitted to Woodward he “wanted to always play it down.”

How the Response Faltered

Early bureaucratic failures gave way to a PR-heavy strategy: daily briefings obsessed with TV ratings, multiple “task forces” of unclear function, and sidelining of experts (CDC Director contradicted and scolded; FDA pressured on monoclonal antibodies; Dr. Anthony Fauci targeted with opposition-research memos). Trump embraced unproven remedies (hydroxychloroquine; musing about injecting disinfectant), installed radiologist Scott Atlas to push a form of “herd immunity,” and portrayed testing as the problem—“If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases.” In July 2020, the administration even tried to cut funding for state testing.

The Numbers You Lived

By Inauguration Day 2021, over 400,000 Americans had died; by late 2020, the U.S. death rate was significantly higher than peer countries. Yet on Fox Business in August 2021, Trump asserted, “When I left it was virtually gone. It was over.” He then suggested boosters were a Pfizer “money-making operation” and called doctors who certified Covid deaths conspirators out for cash. Sen. Rand Paul charged the FDA halted certain antibody treatments out of disdain for “fly-over” America—even as the manufacturers agreed the treatments didn’t work on omicron.

The Rewrite, Codified

The GOP’s base largely accepted the retelling: in 2020 polling, roughly 86–87% of Republicans approved Trump’s Covid handling; by fall 2020, a majority trusted Trump over the CDC for virus information. The political shift bled into vaccine attitudes. Trump was actually booed by supporters for noting he’d received a booster; by 2023 he promised to defund any school (K–college) with vaccine mandates, not limited to Covid. What was a tool of public health became a badge of partisan identity.

A One-Line Filter

“We’re inheriting nothing.” Biden’s team found there was a vaccine development plan (Operation Warp Speed) but essentially no national distribution plan—meaning claims of a handoff of a “great situation” are storytelling, not logistics.

For your own leadership test: Do they elevate expertise or attack it? Do they change facts or change course? And when the data are grim, do they give you comfort, or truth?

The economy is often the final refuge of a failing administration—if people believe they were richer, other sins can be forgiven. Benen measures the Trump record against Trump’s claims and shows how the rewrite took hold.

The Sales Pitch vs. The Data

Candidate Trump promised 4% annual GDP growth, even 6–9% at times. Pre-Covid, growth hovered roughly 2.5–3%—respectable, not historic. Job growth in Trump’s first three years (about 6.4 million) lagged the prior three Obama years (about 8+ million). The unemployment rate kept falling under Trump—but the drop was a continuation of the post-2009 trend he inherited. A late-2019 Washington Post analysis compared like periods and found the economy grew faster and unemployment shrank faster under Obama’s analogous span.

The Tax Cut Test

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act slashed the corporate rate from 35% to 21%, with GOP leaders promising a surge in business investment, hiring, and self-financing revenues. Instead, deficits ballooned; Trump added nearly $7.8 trillion to the national debt in one term (most pre-Covid). Companies used windfalls for stock buybacks rather than broad hiring sprees. The plan proved so unpopular that Republicans barely campaigned on it in the 2018 midterms—despite Mitch McConnell’s boast that, if they couldn’t sell it, they “ought to go into another line of work.”

The Rewrite—and Its Uses

Trump’s farewell address claimed “the greatest economy in the history of the world.” GOP leaders—from John Barrasso to Chuck Grassley—repeated versions of “best in 50 years.” Post-2020 polls showed voters (even some who rejected Trump otherwise) still trusted him more on the economy than Biden—despite Biden-era job creation setting records as the post-pandemic rebound took hold. In 2023, Trump called Biden’s strong employment numbers “phony” and claimed only 2.1 million jobs had been created (the real figure then was about 13.5 million). The myth preserves political capital to push another round of corporate tax cuts (to 15%) if power returns.

Why This Matters to Your Wallet

Economic storytelling shapes policy. If you buy that trickle-down worked wonders, you’ll accept more of it; if you accept that deficits didn’t increase, you’ll shrug at the debt; if you accept that job growth was historically strong, you’ll discount the actual engine of wage gains, labor standards, and public investment. Benen’s point isn’t that Biden’s economy is perfect; it’s that you should weigh claims against data, and slogans against your own paystub.

A Voter’s Rule

When a leader keeps repeating a superlative—“greatest,” “historic,” “perfect”—ask for two numbers and one nonpartisan source. If you can’t get them, you’re in the realm of marketing, not measurement.

(Context: For longer-run debates on inequality and growth, compare to Thomas Piketty’s Capital or Heather Boushey’s Unbound.) The throughline is simple: the economic myth is the same as the wall or the Covid rewrite—repeat it until it becomes muscle memory.