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Don Jr. gets an "A" in riding coattails, an "F" in math

Donald Trump, Jr. took to Twitter to defend his father's record on minorities, as he posted this tweet:

"If over his entire presidency Obama had accomplished 10% of what @realDonaldTrump for these groups the left would anoint him emperor for life. When Trump does it in less than 2 years it's Blah Blah Blah. What a joke!"

I think it's safe to assume Don Jr. is speaking in reference to the fact that unemployment among African-Americans is at the lowest rate ever recorded, dipping to under 6%. But as usual, a Trump isn't telling the whole story and is largely taking credit for someone else's work.

Like every other demographic, black unemployment rose during the Great Recession, peaking at above 15% in 2010. It's been going down ever since, dipping to 12.5% in 2013, 10% in 2015, and roughly 7.5% when Obama left office. So black unemployment went from 17.5% to 7.5% under President Obama, a decrease of 57%. Meanwhile, it's decreased from 7.5% to 6% under President Trump, a decrease of 20% or 37% less than what was achieved under Obama. If Obama had accomplished 10% of what Donald Trump has with regard to African-American unemployment, the unemployment rate would have dropped from 17.5% to 17.3%. Crazily enough, it dropped to 7.5%.

This tactic is very commonplace for the Trumps. Unemployment numbers have been trending downward since the economy started recovering under President Obama. Stock numbers have been trending upward. Job-creation numbers have gone from -800,000 per month to +150,000 to +350,000 per month. Donald Trump can take credit all he likes, the economy didn't just magically turnaround with the snap of his fingers when he was sworn in on January 20th of 2017. These positive economical trends started under President Obama and have been continuing ever since. Therefore he should get the bulk of the credit. When an NFL team has a long successful run and then has to hire a new coach for whatever reason, this new coach isn't all of a sudden the reason for the team's past successes. Chances are he'll have an easier time attaining success, at least in the short-term, than other coaches around the league, but this in no way means it's due to his scouting, work ethic, and/or philosophy that the team is successful in the span. We're not going to know how successful or unsuccessful his coaching is until multiple years have passed. The same holds true for Donald Trump, and the fact of the matter is, from what I've seen thus far anyway, if Trump achieves 10% of what Obama achieved on any front, it'll come as quite the surprise. 

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-jr-says-obama-would-have-been-made-emperor-life-if-hed-done-10-1331186

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/lns14000006

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