President Trump’s Comments about the Debt during his 2016 Election Campaign

Fox News- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVT_eI6xdF0

• In February of 2016, Donald Trump said in an interview on Fox News that he would grow the economy and then easily start paying off the national debt.

Washington Post- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/03/the-fox-news-gop-debate-transcript-annotated/

• During a debate in March 2016, Trump promised that he would reduce the debt by cutting spending; and when asked for an example, Trump reported that he would cut Common Core.

Washington Post- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/02/transcript-donald-trump-interview-with-bob-woodward-and-robert-costa/

• During an interview with the Washington Post in March 2016, Donald Trump said that he would be able to “get rid of the $19 trillion in debt … fairly quickly.” When questioned how long “fairly quickly” was, Trump said within an eight year period.

Fortune- https://fortune.com/2016/04/21/donald-trump-q-and-a/

• During an interview in April 2016 with Fortune, Trump revoked his previous statement from his interview with Washington Post in March 2016 and said that instead of completely paying off the debt, he planned to pay off a percentage of the debt in 10 years. In fact, he continued to say that he would “rather not be so aggressive” when it comes to paying off the debt. He considered rebuilding infrastructure to be a higher priority.

CNBC- https://www.mediamatters.org/embed/static/clips/2016:05:06:46321:cnbc-sb-20160505-trump_debt_default

• In May 2016, in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Trump said that he planned to renegotiate with US creditors in order to get a discount on their payments to make it easier to pay back the national debt.

The Hill - https://thehill.com/business/4736740-trump-biden-fiscal-policy-deficit/

-This article provides an analysis of how Trump has added more debt to the deficit than Biden has and what factors could have caused that.

Market Watch - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-beats-biden-for-king-of-debt-title-as-market-braces-for-crush-of-federal-bonds-6bca5ba7

-This article declares Trump as the king of the “debt race” against Biden. It also talks about the imminent dangers of the market’s decline because of federal bonds.

New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/us/politics/republicans-debt-deficit-platform.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

-This article provides an inside look to how the GOP has changed its view on how the debt has been managed. Debts and deficits fall from the party’s platform.