'Con man' Trump has no way to back up his economic promises: Robert Reich

Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich had some harsh words about former President Donald Trump's competency with the economy on Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's "The ReidOut."

This came in the middle of a discussion on the two parties' economic records, and how Vice President Kamala Harris, who recently unveiled an ambitious economic agenda for her presidential campaign, has a penalty with voters, who trust Republicans more on the economy despite most recessions occurring under Republican presidents.

"Robert, you know, what happens with a Democrat versus a Republican is, when Trump says, 'I'm just going to magically make the economy better,' the media goes, 'Okay, that sounds good.' When a Democrat says, 'I'll do a $3,500 tax credit for newborns,' they go, 'How are you going to pay for that?' Right?" said anchor Joy Reid. "You, on your social media, often say there's an obvious answer to how it's paid for, but let's indulge our friends in my wonderful profession and ask, how would those ideas be funded?"

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"Well, we don't know," said Reich. "The interesting thing about Donald Trump's economics, Trumponomics, is that there is no there there. There's nothing there. Every time you try to reach it, and try to understand what he's talking about, there's absolutely no content."

For example, Reich continued, "he says that he wants to raise tariffs. He says that's going to be good for the economy. But, in fact, we all know a tariff is a tax on whatever is imported. We pay more because of a tariff. Donald Trump's only other policy is to reduce taxes on mostly the wealthy and big corporations, as he did before. He promised, you remember, that that would improve everybody's bottom line by $4,000. Well, did it yours? Did it mine? I can tell you, I don't know anybody who got $4,000 wealthier because of the Trump tax cut."

Indeed, Reich said, Trump's entire brand is based on what a successful businessman he is, and even that's not true.

"I mean, the only success he's had is not as a businessman, but really as a con man," he said. "He's a successful con man. But if you had taken all of the money he got from his father and put it into an index fund, just a stock index fund, closed the door, never looked at it again, it would do better than he now has done ... he would be wealthier than he is today. He lost money."

"Yeah. He would be a billionaire," said Reid. "He would be an actual billionaire!"

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