Forrest Trump
A funny thing happened on the way to a Washington, D.C. mired in permanent Congressional investigations and seemingly intractable political animosity — private sector employment surged by nearly 300,000 in the first full month of the Trump Presidency. While the bumbling Tweeter-In-Chief struggles to get through politician school, his other persona precedes him. It’s called Capitalism. Successful capitalism. America once was a free-market, free enterprise, risk-taking capitalistic system. Perhaps it will be again.
As reported by the Labor Department on Wednesday, March 8th, a re-awakening U.S. economy added 32,000 manufacturing jobs and 60,000 construction jobs with another 160,000 in the “producers” sector, and 50,000 in other categories. The smart set’s best guesses saw a jobs market expansion of 190,000, so the real figure blew a big hole in the pundits’ doldrums. (By more than 100,000 jobs!)
Even as President Trump continues to confuse and confound the mainstream media, while squandering a generous wad of political capital, the unseen hand of a larger force that moves global markets in slow and subtle ways seems to be buoyed by growing confidence in, well, a return to greatness.
Restated and expanded, the Labor Department reported on Friday that unemployment was down to 4.8% (8.3% when “O” started out), wages were up, productivity steady, markets optimistic and consumer sentiment ready to smile again.
“Confidence is playing a large role,” said Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics on CNBC. “Businesses are anticipating a lot of good stuff — tax cuts, less regulation. They are hiring more aggressively.”
Things always sort of seemed to turn out okay for Forest Gump, the same with Forest Trump. Gump the philosopher usually had a pithy explanation for just about everything, “Momma said there’s only so much fortune a man really needs and the rest is just for showing off.”
Trump the philosopher usually saves his juiciest tweets for Saturday mornings when his sternest minders are off duty, and his recklessness is liable to do the most damage.
The failing @nytimes has been wrong about me from the very beginning. Said I would lose the primaries, then the general election. FAKE NEWS! 5:04 AM – 28 Jan 2017
Don’t believe the main stream (fake news) media.The White House is running VERY WELL. I inherited a MESS and am in the process of fixing it. 5:31 AM – 18 Feb 2017
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! 3:55 AM May 4, 2017
Yes, well, whatever. Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees. Between Trump’s many shots to his own feet and the media’s harvesting so much low growing fruit, it’s easy to miss some real news — like, it’s “The Economy Stupid.” Impressive job growth in his first month in office. Shut up and keep dancing.
Last Saturday there was no pre-dawn tweet from the White House. That itself made a small ripple in the news cycle. Learning to be Presidential is a sometimes painful process.
Forrest: What’s my destiny, Mama?
Mrs. Gump: You’re gonna have to figure that out for yourself.