Trump’s ‘roaring economy' meets a rough start to 2026 with job losses, rising gas prices and uncertainty
Donald Trump promised that 2026 would be a bumper year for economic growth. Instead it's kicked off with job losses, rising gasoline prices and more uncertainty about America’s future.
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"The lie detector has determined THAT WAS A LIE."
[audience gasps]
Sir, you told America the economy would be ROARING in 2026. We have job losses. We have $5 gas. We have uncertainty. So today on our show we ask, who is responsible? The results are in. And the father IS... your tariff policy.
Bro is out here running a whole Maury episode in the comment section at 2am and honestly? Not wrong. The tariff baby DNA test don't lie. These prices didn't spike themselves.
Tariff Daddy broke the economy and his fans are still out here calling it a "rough patch." Sir, $5 gas is not a rough patch, that is policy. That is the point.
You're right that it's policy, I've been saying that since day one. The man is a con artist who handed economic leverage to Netanyahu and tanked American wallets in the process. And yet here we are. Meanwhile the late and great OJ Simpson, rest his soul, got railroaded by a worse justice system than the one letting Trump hide the Epstein files.
Concordantly, the economic data corroborates what the prices themselves already declared vis-a-vis causation. Ergo the only question worth positing is not WHETHER the tariffs created this inflationary feedback loop but who still requires a Maury episode to accept what the CPI reports have been stating unambiguously for months.
you're doing a maury bit to avoid admitting gas prices and inflation were already climbing before tariffs kicked in, right?
The tariff baby metaphor is sending me but it's literally the most accurate description of this disaster I've seen. He campaigned on prices going down DAY ONE and now we're at $5 gas while he's busy hiding Epstein files. The economy isn't roaring, it's screaming.
yeah so "roaring economy" was the pitch and we're three months in with layoffs and gas spikes, that tracks pretty perfectly with how this administration operates.
The gas piece is actually pretty explainable if you follow the Iran situation, but that's almost worse for them because this administration's foreign policy choices fed directly into Hormuz closing. You don't get to take credit for "energy dominance" and then dodge blame when your Middle East posture contributes to a supply shock.
The layoffs part I'm watching more carefully. Some of that is sector-specific stuff that was coming regardless, but the uncertainty from tariff whiplash is genuinely starting to show up in hiring freezes that weren't there six months ago. Companies don't like not knowing what their import costs are going to be week to week.
So yeah, "roaring economy" was always a vibes pitch more than a policy pitch. The tell was always that it was based almost entirely on inheriting a labor market that had already recovered. That runway runs out.
Three months is the setup period for any admin, so what's the actual comparison to where we were a year ago on those metrics?
A year ago Trump had been president for over a year, so that "setup period" excuse doesn't really work here.
This is what happens when you let the deep state bureaucracy sabotage every single policy before it can work. Trump inherited an absolute DISASTER from Biden, and yeah it takes time to unwind that mess. But the media won't give him five minutes before they're screaming the sky is falling.
Job losses? Most of those are phantom numbers anyway, seasonal adjustments the Labor Department cooks up. And gas prices are still being manipulated by OPEC and the Iran situation that's out of his control. You think Trump wants high energy costs? Of course not. But the legacy media wants to blame HIM instead of the actual actors screwing with global markets.
This is exactly the kind of hit piece PBS loves to run. They spent four years covering for Biden's inflation spiral and now they want to nail Trump for not having a magic wand. The economy doesn't turn around in four months. Anyone who knows anything about policy knows that. But nuance doesn't sell outrage, so here we are with another manufactured crisis narrative.
Trump has been doing everything HE wanted since day one, zero resistance, and this is what we get. The "deep state" excuse is so tired, he controls every agency, fired anyone who pushed back, and still can't stop the economy from tanking under his own tariff chaos.
And gas prices being "out of his control" is rich when he spent 2024 screaming that HE alone could fix them in 24 hours. The Strait of Hormuz situation didn't fall out of the sky, his foreign policy made it worse. You don't get to take credit for everything and then blame OPEC the second numbers go bad.
The "roaring economy" is out there roaring alright, roaring past your local gas station at $5.19 a gallon.
Been a union pipefitter for 22 years. Gas prices hurt ME too, I'm not gonna pretend otherwise. But I remember $5 gas under Biden, I remember watching my overtime dry up, I remember watching the plant next door close because everything got shipped to China. PBS isn't gonna tell you that part.
The Strait of Hormuz situation is driving prices right now and every analyst knows it. That's Iran, not tariffs. You want cheap gas, maybe don't let the last administration fund Iran for four years straight.
Job losses in Q1 happen every single year, in every single presidency. PBS didn't run this headline in 2021 when Biden's numbers came in soft. I checked. They called it "transitional." Now suddenly one quarter of data is a five-alarm fire.
I didn't vote for Trump because I thought it'd be easy. I voted for him because the alternative was more of the same guys who looked at my town and decided we didn't matter anymore. That hasn't changed.
according to who though? "job losses" plural but what's the actual number and which sectors? "rising gas prices" compared to when exactly? the excerpt's doing a lot of heavy lifting with vague language instead of data. PBS should know better than this.
pbs lieing again lol trump is cleaning out all the bad peple in goverment and the ekonomy takes time to fix after biden ruined it for years!! trump 2028 make it happen!!
Buddy I voted Republican my whole life and I want this to work too, but gas is $4.50 here in a town where people drive 40 miles to work. That's real money out of real pockets right now. Blaming Biden is fine up to a point but we're 16 months in and prices aren't coming down.
And "Trump 2028" isn't a thing. Two terms max, that's the Constitution. If you want to cheer for the guy at least learn the rules.