This week in Trumponomics

President Trump has recently made claims about how the United States’ economy is very strong and that the economy could grow at a ’20% pace in the third quarter.’ Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman joined The Final Round to dismantle Trump’s recent claims on the economy and gives this week's Trumpometer reading.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to The Final Round here on Yahoo Finance. It's time for Trumponomics, where we take a look at President Trump's performance for the week. And this week, it was all about him focusing on his wins, similar to past weeks, I guess, but this time claiming that the economy is on a great track. Rick, I think I have a-- have a feeling of what you're going to say about this, but how did President Trump do this week?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, there's a jobs boom. Did you guys know that? There's a-- I mean, there's a booming-- Trump has this chart he's now been showing. He put it on Twitter. And the chart makes it look like things are even better in the job market than they were before the pandemic.

Of course, that's not true. So what Trump is doing, a little sleight of hand here. He's going around showing off the jobs boom by using a chart that shows the three-month change in jobs rather than just what's been happening in the job market, and it makes things look way better than they are.

But if-- I've compared this to-- I put two charts in my story right next to each other. So if you look at the actual job market, it's still terrible. We've only gotten back about one third of the jobs we've lost. We did get new job numbers this month-- this week, I mean, on unemployment claims, as we do every Thursday.

So the big news, below 1 million people filing for unemployment insurance for the first time this week. That is an improvement, but it is still in terrible shape. So President Trump is running out of time to claim victory on the economy, but he's declaring victory anyway, and he's really misleading people. So we're not all the way down to sad this week, but we are-- the Trump-o-meter does say-- aah-- failing. That's the second lowest-- that's the second lowest mark on the Trump-o-meter, and that's simply because Trump continues to severely mislead people about how deep the hole is that we're in right now.

SEANA SMITH: Well, yeah. And Rick, that's interesting, because we talk about the way that President Trump spins a lot of the-- I don't think you can call them facts-- but the data points that he gets, and like you're saying, what he was focusing on when it comes to jobs, but also when it comes to the stimulus debate. I mean, within the past hour or two, he's been tweeting throughout the day just about how he's directed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to send direct payments, $3,400 for a family of four to all Americans, but he's blaming the Democrats for holding that up.

He's also saying that the Treasury and Small Business Administration also has-- it has additional PPP payments to small business that has been hurt from the coronavirus, yet the Dems are holding that up as well. So it's this rhetoric that I don't think-- and you make this point in your story-- that's not going to change, especially anytime before the election.

RICK NEWMAN: I mean, to Trump's credit, it's not really his fault that Democrats and Republicans can't come together and figure out a fourth stimulus plan. I mean, they did do this three times before, and now they're-- they're at an impasse that's probably going to last well into September. And I think because Trump has now inserted the Postal Service into this and saying he doesn't want to sign any bill that has this extra funding for the Postal Service-- it's a relatively small amount of money, but it's apparently a big issue-- I think there's now a small chance that we get no stimulus bill by-- by November.

So Trump is-- I guess any president would be trying to do executive actions at this point. I am going to predict I don't-- I think hardly anybody is actually going to get this aid that he says he's rolling out. There's also some additional unemployment insurance he says he can do by executive action. I think very few people are ever going to see this money.

And the problem Trump is going to have as we get into September and October is people will know he's lying. I mean, you cannot tell people that they're better off than they think they really are. I mean, if people cannot pay the rent, and they're starting to run late on their car payments or their mortgage, you cannot tell them no, it's really not that bad.

They know how bad it is, and you cannot put up a chart that convinces them otherwise. We've had some politicians who learned this in the past. Obama made this mistake in 2014. He got "shellacked." That was his word in the 2014 midterms. Trump could be facing the same thing if he keeps lying to people like this.

SEANA SMITH: All right, well, we certainly will see because-- no, but we will continue to cover this all the way up until the election and then, of course, beyond. But Rick Newman, thanks so much for breaking that down for us.