BREAKING: “WHY HAS PRESIDENT TRUMP FAILED?” Jake Tapper CORNERS Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett over his broken promise on mortgages – after rates soar above 7%!
Donald Trump promised Americans dramatically cheaper mortgages.
Instead, the average 30-year mortgage rate just climbed back above 7%.
CNN's Jake Tapper confronted Trump's top economic adviser Kevin Hassett with that rather uncomfortable reality Sunday morning – and Hassett simply refused to concede that anything had gone wrong.
“Two years ago, President Trump said he thought he could get mortgage rates down to 3% or even lower,” Tapper said. “Last week, mortgage rates had the biggest weekly jump in four years. It's more than 7%. Why has President Trump failed to deliver on that promise?”
“President Trump hasn't failed to deliver at all,” Hassett insisted. “The economy is booming.”
For anyone who has ever bought a house, refinanced one or watched their kids struggle to afford their first home, the difference between a 3% mortgage and a 7% mortgage isn't an economic abstraction.
On a $300,000 30-year mortgage, principal and interest at 3% would run about $1,265 a month. At 7%, it's roughly $2,000.
That's nearly $750 more every month – before taxes and insurance even enter the picture.
And Tapper wasn't finished with confronting Hassett with evidence of his mendacity.
He pointed out that only 29,000 jobs were added in September, earlier job numbers had been revised downward, inflation was running at 3.4%, and wage growth had slowed to a five-year low.
Hassett repeatedly insisted that Americans' spending proves they are actually optimistic about the economy, while dismissing gloomy consumer surveys as unreliable and potentially distorted by partisan respondents.
Tapper kept bringing him back to those numbers he couldn’t spin away from.
Finally, after Hassett insisted that if Americans were really unhappy “it'd show up in the data,” Tapper delivered the line that summed up the entire interview.
“It seems to be showing up in the data,” he said, “just not the data you're looking at.”
Game, set, match Tapper.
Hassett can lie to Americans they're living through an economic boom all he likes.
But the mortgage company still sends a bill, no one is there to pay it but them
