The national debt held by the public tops\u00a0$27 trillion<\/a>. It’s bigger than the entire\u00a0American economy<\/a>\u2014and it’s on track to grow faster and faster. In just four years, Donald Trump signed legislation that increased future debt by $7.8 trillion<\/a>, more than George W. Bush and Barack Obama managed in eight years apiece. We’re headed for an economic catastrophe.<\/p>\n

So when Trump made an appearance late last week at PubKey, a bitcoin-themed bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, Reason<\/em>‘s Nick Gillespie went down to ask him about it. And he had a snappy comeback.<\/p>\n

Less than half<\/a> of Trump’s new debt was related to pandemic spending. And the COVID-19 relief bill establishing the Paycheck Protection Program, which Trump signed in 2020, was so rife with corruption and waste that one federal prosecutor has called it<\/a>\u00a0the “biggest fraud in a generation.”And get this: His new campaign proposals would add another\u00a0$5.8 trillion<\/a> to the debt. Trump has called himself the\u00a0“king of debt<\/a>.” If he gets a second term, he just might become its emperor.<\/p>\n

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• Video Editor:<\/strong> Cody Huff<\/a><\/li>\n
• Graphics:<\/strong> Adani Samat<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  The post Trump Dodged My Question About the Federal Debt<\/a> appeared first on Reason.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Reason’s Nick Gillespie asked former President Donald Trump about how he plans to bring down the national debt. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[19,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106678"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}