Trump's imaginary numbers, from $1.99 gas to 1,500 percent price cuts

Boston Globe

4 hours ago

Trump even congratulated Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas A. Collins for having an approval rating of 92 percent. In this polarized moment, it is unlikely any US political figure enjoys a figure close to that, and the White House provided no source for the claim.
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Trump is hardly the first politician to toss out figures that wilt under scrutiny. But he attaches precise numbers to his claims with unusual frequency, giving the assertions an air of authority and credibility - yet the numbers often end up being incorrect or not even plausible. The bogus statistics are part of Trump's long history of falsehoods and misleading claims, which numbered more than 30,000 in his first term alone.
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'He uses statistics less as a factual statement of, 'Here is what the best data says,' and more as rhetorical construct to sell an idea,' said Robert C. Rowland, professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, who has studied Trump's rhetoric. 'I think he uses statistics as something to make whatever he is saying look better. He will choose a statistic based on what he thinks he can credibly say, and frankly, there are not strong limits on that.'
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Trump has made little secret of his disdain for research and expertise. Yet he routinely reaches for numbers or statistics, often grandiose ones, when seeking to hammer home the failures of his adversaries, the grandeur of his accomplishments or the boldness of his promises.
At the July 22 reception for GOP members of Congress, the president waxed expansive about his goals for the future, including a plan to cut drug prices.
'This is something that nobody else can do,' Trump said. 'We're going to get the drug prices down - not 30 or 40 percent, which would be great, not 50 or 60. No, we're going to get them down 1,000 percent, 600 percent, 500 percent, 1,500 percent.'
At the same event, Trump mocked Democrats for claiming that consumer prices were rising when, he said, they were falling precipitously. 'Gasoline is … we hit $1.99 a gallon today in five different states,' Trump said, as the lawmakers applauded. 'We have gasoline that's going down to the low $2's, and in some cases even breaking that.'
AAA maintains a website showing the average cost of gas in every state. None was significantly below $3 per gallon.
The White House suggested that such numeric minutiae matter far less than Trump's sweeping accomplishments.
'The fact of the matter is that President Trump has delivered historic progress on America's economy, health care, foreign policy, and national security,' White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. 'He's right to tout these victories for the American people, and no amount of pointless nitpicking by the Fake News is going to change that.'
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Trump tangled with numbers again last Thursday in an appearance with Federal Reserve chair Jerome H. Powell, whom he has hinted he might fire. The president complained that a renovation of two Fed headquarters buildings was expected to cost $3.1 billion, prompting Powell to shake his head and respond, 'I'm not aware of that.'
Trump handed Powell a sheet of paper, saying the $3.1 billion figure number had just come out. 'You're including the Martin renovation,' Powell said, looking at the paper. 'You just added in a third building, is what that is.' Trump said, 'It's a building that's being built,' and Powell countered: 'No, it was built five years ago. We finished Martin five years ago.'
Some analysts believe the misuse of numbers is growing, a reflection of an era when Americans increasingly inhabit separate realities. Ismar Volić, a mathematics professor at Wellesley College, said people often seize on numbers offered by politicians they trust as confirmation of their preexisting worldview.
'Trump is an egregious example, but it's not limited to him, nor did he invent this,' Volić said. 'It's like absolute, final, immutable truth - when you throw out a number or graph or chart statistic, people tend to believe it.'
But those numbers often do not get the scrutiny they deserve, said Volić, who specializes in algebraic topology and wrote a book called 'Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation.'
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'A consequence of bad math education is we are just scared of math, and therefore not in the habit of questioning it, scrutinizing it or looking at it critically,' Volić said. 'That makes it an effective tool, because anything that scares us can be used as a tactic of manipulation, and politicians absolutely know this.'
Trump was also specific in the weeks before the July 3 passage of his sweeping budget bill, which extended tax cuts from his first term. If his bill did not pass, he warned on May 30: 'You'll have a 68 percent tax increase. That's a number nobody's ever heard of before. You'll have a massive tax increase.'
Financial experts were predicting taxes would go up about 7.5 percent if the legislation failed - still a substantial hike but far from the 68 percent figure. The White House has declined to comment and several fact-checkers tried unsuccessfully to determine where Trump's number was coming from, speculating that Trump was conflating it with the proportion of Americans who would see their taxes go up.
Republican pollster Whit Ayres said it is important to get numbers right, but that Trump is unique.
'In many ways, Donald Trump is sui generis in the way he uses numbers,' Ayres said. 'I don't think you can use the way he uses numbers as an example for how other politicians might effectively use numbers. I will simply say that accurate numbers are a lot more compelling than inaccurate numbers.'
To Trump's critics, his looseness with numbers dates to his long career as a developer and real estate mogul, when he specialized in touting his properties and, they say, often exaggerating their value and features.
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In February 2024, Trump was found guilty in a civil fraud case after the New York attorney general said he had inflated his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion annually. The judge found, for example, that Trump described his luxury apartment as being 30,000 square feet when it was actually 10,996. He has appealed the verdict.
Other presidents, including Joe Biden, have also been less than precise with their math on occasion, though Biden's misstatements tended to involve his personal history rather than the country's condition. He said repeatedly that he had traveled 17,000 miles with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, for example; The Washington Post Fact Checker found that figure misleading at best.
Most presidents have worried that tossing out demonstrably incorrect facts or figures would hurt their credibility, Rowland, the communications professor, said.
'I was reading Reagan's speeches where he personally made notations,' Rowland said. 'You will occasionally see him write in, 'Check this data.' That is the norm for presidents … That is the opposite of what is happening now.'