Reply to "Why Donald Trump's tweet about national debt decrease in his first month is highly misleading"

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Why Donald Trump's tweet about national debt decrease in his first month is highly misleading

By Aaron Sharockman on Saturday, February 25th, 2017 at 11:41 a.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...ecline-national-deb/

Our ruling

Trump tweeted, "The National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion."

Trump would be wise to not read too much into this figure, which sounds more noteworthy than it actually is. The national debt fluctuates up and down depending on the day. While the debt is "down" after one month, experts say that trend will reverse and the debt will continue to rise.

This factoid is a gross misrepresentation of the state of the debt and the role the new president had in shaping the figure.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

Update: This post has been updated to include comments from Neil Buchanan and to include Donald Marren's current title.

2/25/172:23 PM

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Why Donald Trump's tweet about national debt decrease in his first month is highly misleading

Our ruling

We rate this claim Mostly False.

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