Washington Examiner calls economy 'booming' 17 days after calling Trump's approval 'not good'

…(cont) Washington Examiner, September 23rd — seventeen days after the piece from the sixth, same masthead — headline reading "Proof Trump's economy is better than they're telling you." The word inside the copy itself is "booming." Seventeen days. One outlet. Two verdicts on the same man's economy, and the arithmetic is easy enough to check without a calculator: the sixth to the twenty-third is seventeen days, about two and a half weeks, not longer.

In between those two dates, on the eighteenth, The Hill had Republican senators on the record, publicly uncomfortable, rebuffing the president's own attacks on the Federal Reserve over interest rates. Two days after that, on the twentieth, NBC News put out a poll: most voters, asked plainly, said the president has hurt the economy, and named him as the reason for high prices. Three days after that poll — the twenty-third — the Examiner ran "booming."

I brought the car in that same week, as it happens — the fan belt again, same corner garage, same guy behind the counter who's had my number since before I had the dog. Two invoices sitting in the glovebox now, a few weeks apart, same noise under the hood both times, two different totals written by the same hand. I'm not saying the man cheated me. I'm saying I have the paper for both visits, and I can hold them side by side, and so can you, and the second total isn't required to agree with the first one just because they came out of the same shop.

That's the question I keep parking the car over. Is a growth rate the shop quotes you the same thing as the bill you actually pay at the register — or are those two different documents, filed seventeen days apart by the same hand? The Examiner says real GDP grew at a 1.5% annualized rate last quarter. NBC's poll, three days before that piece ran, says most voters, asked about that same economy in that same stretch, said it's hurting them. Both are on the record. Neither one is quoting the other.

NPR had a poll out that same day, the twenty-third — most voters saying the midterms are about the president, and that they disapprove of him. Same day as "booming." I wrote that one down too, mostly because I couldn't find a shorter way to say it than what the poll already says.

Oh — before you head back inside. One more invoice, since the glovebox is already open. The receipt for the gas people are filling up on this week — the one the Examiner says is sitting underneath a booming economy — which of the two does it agree with, "booming," or "not good"? Both words came out of the same masthead, seventeen days apart. Only one of them shows up in the poll.