GOP operative slams Trump for making the same mistake as Biden about the US economy
The President recently wrote an opinion piece in which he claimed that his tariffs saved the US.
Feb. 3 2026, Published 5:58 a.m. ET
US President Donald Trump rarely ever shies away from tooting his own horn, but it has gotten him a lot of stern criticism of late. Americans have been struggling with affordability thanks to inflation and tariffs for many months now. Job cuts have also been on the rise due to numerous reasons. Despite all of this, the President went on to claim that the country was better than ever, drawing a sharp response from GOP operative Karl Rove, who believed Trump was making the same mistake as Joe Biden.
According to a report in Mediaite, Rove slammed the President for making such comments when hundreds of thousands across the country have lost jobs and were struggling to make ends meet. His comments came after Trump had penned an opinion piece in a publication that he is not a fan of, the Wall Street Journal. In it, the president once again claimed that Joe Biden left him with a poor economy, and everything he has done so far has made that a whole lot better.
“I inherited an economy ravaged by the radical policies of Sleepy Joe Biden and his allies in Congress,” Trump wrote in his piece. “Their trillions of dollars in wasteful spending and their extremist green energy agenda created the worst inflation in more than 40 years, costing the typical American family $33,000 in real wealth. The Biden years were defined by the misery known as “stagflation”—high inflation and low growth.”
The president then went on to claim that in just 12 months of power, his administration had achieved “extremely low inflation, and extraordinarily high economic growth!” Trump largely credited his tariffs for not just doing that, but also for stopping several potential major wars around the world. “Just over one year ago, we were a “DEAD” country. Now, we are the “HOTTEST” country anywhere in the world!” Trump had exclaimed. However, the truth of those claims is contested by many on a global scale.
Rove was not impressed with these comments, as America saw 70,000 cuts in manufacturing jobs and a whopping 145,000 cuts in blue-collar jobs. He blamed Trump for making the same mistake that Biden did during his time in office. “He’s making the same mistake Joe Biden made: ‘Bidenomics is working,” he said, as per the report.
Rove then went on to drive his point home, as he explained, “That piece in The Wall Street Journal is: ‘the economy is great.’ That’s not what people feel. Last year, we lost 70,000 manufacturing jobs. We lost 145,000 blue-collar jobs. There’s a great deck put out today by the Washington consultant and prognosticator Bruce Millman. Blue-collar consumer confidence is at a record low since 1976, when they began asking the question. The top 20 percent of the of the American population is responsible for 75 percent of the GDP. The bottom 80 percent is responsible for 25 percent of GDP.”
More on Market Realist