The satirists at Saturday Night Live love to paint Eric Trump as so dumb he probably eats paint chips (or Tide pods?) Alex Griswold at the Washington Free Beacon found some fake news emanating from the Washington Post, as they desperately wanted to mock Eric as a silly silver-spoon baby who worries about his retirement savings.
Post correspondent Christopher Ingraham "reported" on the "Wonkblog" some remarks Eric Trump supposedly made on Hannity in which he crowed that his 401(k) retirement account was booming ever since his father took office.
"I just opened up my 401(k), I haven't looked at in a year. It's up by 35 percent. I didn't think retirement was possible," the Post reported Trump as saying.
Ingraham wrote, "Set aside the fact that Trump, heir to a multibillion-dollar fortune and an already-wealthy businessman in his own right, the returns on a measly $18,500 in annual 401(k) contributions have little bearing on his ability to stop working." That didn't up sounding very wonky.
That's because Eric Trump did not claim his own retirement account was doing well. He was simply repeating what people on the street told him about how well their IRAs were doing under President Trump:
ERIC TRUMP: They [the media] were supposed to be the smart people...they're the brilliant journalists. They all got it wrong. He quite frankly embarrassed them and they're doubling down again. And he is going to prove them wrong again and again. Because you know what, every day, I have told you this metaphor a thousand times, but every single day I walk on the street and people come up to me, they hugged me. "Tell your father we say thank you. You know what, I just opened up my 401(k), I haven't looked at in a year. It is up by 35 percent. I mean, I didn't think retirement was possible"...These are the stories I hear every single day, Sean.
Griswold noted the liberal newspaper's first (Fake News) headline was "Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one." He guessed the problem:
The error was likely caused by Fox News' transcript of the Trump interview, which treated the first and second halves of Trump's sentence as separate thoughts and included a paragraph break halfway through. A preface at the top notes that it is a rush transcript, and that "this copy may not be in its final form and may be updated."
The Post piece has since been updated with the correct quote and a new headline accurately recounting that Trump "says 401(k)s are doing great."
"An earlier version of this incorrectly framed Eric Trump's remarks on Hannity," a correction reads. "He was characterizing what a person on the street said to him, not his own 401(k) account."
