Trump Gets Last Laugh When WaPo's Own Version of 'Dewey Defeats Truman' Blows Up in Their Faces
As Friday dawned, The Washington Post warned its readers that it was going to be a bad day.
Well, it was, but not quite the way the Post expected.
“Grim milestone to be reached as May unemployment rate nears 20 percent,” the Post tweeted in a since-deleted message, presaging the Department of Labor’s report on unemployment for May, according to Fox News.
Oops.
When the report came out, it revealed that the unemployment rate was 13.3 percent and that the resurgent economy had begun to shrug off coronavirus-induced lockdowns as employment rose by 2.5 million jobs.
The Post dismissed the error as part and parcel of the world of modern journalism.
“Ahead of the release of today’s jobs report, we published a story reflecting how many economists expected the country to reach an unemployment milestone. That story was then updated when the jobs data was released,” a Post representative told Fox.
The Post never actually said it got it wrong, but included a message on Twitter saying, “An earlier version of this tweet was deleted because it carried a headline that had not been updated after the release of today’s unemployment numbers. This tweet is correct.”
Many poked fun at the Post for its mistake — a spoke-too-soon presumption reminiscent of the Chicago Daily Tribune’s infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline that wrongly “reported” the results of the 1948 presidential election.
‘DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN’ Right, Jeff? @JeffBezos #FakeNews @washingtonpost @amazon https://t.co/xPk1y7PgF0
— David R. Barkholz (@BarkholzR) June 5, 2020
It was anticipated to be 20% by the fake news propaganda machines. This is a great start for it being only June, the economy will be roaring well before election day at this rate. Great news for @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/8RICdgpG2Y
— BunneryBaker (@BunneryBakery) June 5, 2020
Great work, guys. pic.twitter.com/Rx1lLHJxrB
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) June 5, 2020
It was anticipated to be 20% by the fake news propaganda machines. This is a great start for it being only June, the economy will be roaring well before election day at this rate. Great news for @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/8RICdgpG2Y
— BunneryBaker (@BunneryBakery) June 5, 2020
Trump talked about the economy’s better-than-expected performance during an appearance at Puritan Medical Products in Guilford, Maine, according to a White House media pool report.
“Economists forecast that the unemployment rate, as I said, would be about 19 percent, and they were hoping for 20 percent, the opponents of ours. They’d rather have things be bad so they can try and win an election. So they were hoping it would be 20 percent. Instead, it’s 13 percent. That was good. That — we made up a lot of time, a lot of distance. It’s really great,” Trump said.
“Even I was surprised by this one. This was better than I thought. I thought it would be OK but I didn’t know this.”
Obviously enjoying the chance to laugh at the discomfort of his opponents in both the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, Trump said that the United States is currently in a period he calls “transition to greatness.”
“And our stock market is booming, and our jobs are booming. And, you know, you just have to look at a place like this. You just have to get off the plane and ride here, and you see the spirit of Maine and other places — other places. It’s amazing. It’s amazing,” Trump said.
“So we absolutely shattered expectations. And this is the largest monthly jobs increase in American history. American — think of that: That’s a long time, right? By far. I think it’s more than double or about double of what our highest was before,” Trump said.
Trump said that even though lockdowns imposed to respond to the coronavirus had severe economic consequences, the economy will bounce back.
“I built it once, now I’m building it again,” Trump said. “We had to close it down. We did the right thing. We closed it down and we saved millions of lives.”
Trump was upbeat about the future.
“[T]his next year will be better, I think, than any year we’re ever had. That’s how I feel about it,” Trump said.
“America’s economic comeback has begun. The next year is set to be a year, and — I remember I said it, but it’s going to be an amazing year,” he said.
If the economy continues its turnaround, carrying Trump to re-election in November, it will be the best last laugh of all.
And it will be a very bad day for the editors of the anti-Trump Washington Post.
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