Incomes are increasing under Trump, but guess how the media are portraying things.
Incomes are increasing under Trump, but guess how the media are portraying things.
I s history repeating itself in that major media outlets are distorting coverage of the economy to help Democrats in the weeks leading up to a key election?
In 1992, Republican President George H. W. Bush entered the home stretch of the election with voters being relentlessly told that the economy was faltering and conditions were bad. Democratic challenger Bill Clinton amplified that message with his slogan, “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” and his claim that the economy was the worst it had been since the Great Depression.
But the economy was actually on the rise from a dip that began in July 1990 but was already over by the spring of 1991. “The recession ended in March 1991,” reported the National Bureau of Economic Research, and “an expansion began at that time.” That’s a full 20 months before the November 1992 election. Yet, a 1996 paper published in the American Journal of Political Science found that “the networks’ portrayal of the economy got worse as the economy improved.” A Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans thought the economy was in a recession as they went to the polls.
A study by Investor’s Business Daily found that in October 1992, 90 percent of the economic news in newspapers was negative: “The election was held on Nov. 3. Clinton won, and that month only 14% of the economic news in newspapers was negative,” recalls syndicated columnist Larry Elder. Funny how that worked.
Mark Penn, who was Bill Clinton’s pollster in the 1990s, admitted in his 2007 book, Microtrends, that he had “found over the years that there is often a huge disconnect between belief about the economy and the true economic state of affairs.”
“Until the statistics are actually published, people tend to assess the economy primarily through the eyes of the national media. In 1992, when Bill Clinton won the presidency based on worries about the economy, the statistics that came out after the election showed that the period leading up to November had actually been a period of record growth,” he wrote.
An economic analysis by the website Issues & Insights concludes: “The lesson is the economy doesn’t have to be in decline to impact political races. All that’s needed is the perception that we’re headed downhill toward a cliff.”
Today, that perception is being sold as a clearly exaggerated reality. Fuel prices are high due to the Iran war, but during the first year of President Trump’s second term, household incomes for the lowest 25 percent of earners were hitting their highest level ever, and Hispanic and black poverty was dropping to all-time lows. Encouraging signals include positive quarterly GDP growth, healthy retail sales, low unemployment claims, and industrial output at post-pandemic highs.
But the Washington Post and others reported last weekend that real wages for average Americans have been flat under Trump, and therefore the middle class is falling behind. The Post’s downer headline was: “Americans have seen no real wage growth on average during Trump’s second term.”
But in reality, real median household income is up a healthy $2,500 since Trump took office in January 2025. He has recorded five times the gain in income in two years versus what President Joe Biden achieved in four years.
These numbers also don’t include the $2,000 per family benefit of the Trump tax cut. If Democrats had had the majority in Congress, 2026 would have brought thousands of dollars in higher taxes for most American families. Ironically, these are the people who are running on “affordability.”
How can wages be flat while incomes are up?
The answer is that wages are only about two-thirds of average family income, according to the Federal Reserve Board. Americans also get income from dividends, interest payments, rental income, stock sales (capital gains), pensions, gifts, and other sources.
The booming economy and stock market have increased almost all of these nonwage forms of money income.
Can we predict when the media’s relentless downbeat coverage of the economy will end? Based on the 1992 precedent, I’d say that if Democrats win one or both houses of Congress in the midterms, the picture of the economy portrayed by the media will feature more blue skies and sunshine in January, just after the new Congress is sworn in.