The Art of Retail Gaslighting

Trump boasts that this year’s 3.4% increase in holiday retail sales is the highest in US history, somehow ignoring the fact that only last year those sales increased 5.1%. You would think a very stable genius would understand that 5.1 is a bigger number than 3.4. You would think a president would have advisors who could explain this to him. Apparently not.

The 3.4% number comes from a report on holiday shopping published by Mastercard, which also revealed that online sales make up a record high share (almost 15%) of overall sales.  Trump likely latched onto the word “record” in media reports, like the one from Reuters whose headline read “Record online sales give U.S. holiday shopping season a boost.” Maybe Trump fixated on the word “record” and completely missed “online”. You can’t expect him to read every word, after all.  (A very plausible alternative theory is that Trump knows exactly what he's doing and willfully ignored the finer points of the report to suit his purposes.) 

So, perhaps without knowing it, Trump touts a record holiday season for e-commerce -- which, let's face it, ain’t nothing, and is obviously the undisputed and unstoppable trend in the retail business. Good for the likes of Amazon (which pays no sales tax, and incidentally is run by Jeff Bezos, whom Trump hates). Good for those communities where e-commerce firms operate (for example, just seven locations in Georgia, in the case of Amazon).  

Meanwhile, sales in brick-and-mortar stores, located in every community in America, didn’t look nearly as rosy, rising only 1.2%. But Trump doesn’t brag about that. Actually, it’s nothing to brag about.