If he had even one iota of concern for policy, and how his decisions affected the public, he would instead be talking up what a great job his appointee Jerome Powell did, and trying to say that what's good about the economy comes from that, rather than just uniformly pretending everything is terrible.
But of course he made the same kind of error around COVID, just bashing the vaccines instead of taking credit for Operation Warp Speed and the work by Azar to prep for distribution. (Of course the reality is that these things worked because he happened to have made a few good appointments and didn't interfere. But a less narcissistic politician would be able to share credit with those appointees and try to win points for their work.)
If he had even one iota of concern for policy, and how his decisions affected the public, he would instead be talking up what a great job his appointee Jerome Powell did, and trying to say that what's good about the economy comes from that, rather than just uniformly pretending everything is terrible.
But of course he made the same kind of error around COVID, just bashing the vaccines instead of taking credit for Operation Warp Speed and the work by Azar to prep for distribution. (Of course the reality is that these things worked because he happened to have made a few good appointments and didn't interfere. But a less narcissistic politician would be able to share credit with those appointees and try to win points for their work.)