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Regnerus Scandal: Researcher Lying, Not Independent From Anti-Gay Funders

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WHAT THIS INVOLVES

A study booby-trapped against gay parents.

The booby-trapped study is serving as a basis for National Organization for Marriage anti-gay attack ads all over the country.

The hoax study was perpetrated by Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin (UT).

The most outrageously defamatory of its false findings is that children of gay parents experience dramatically high levels of sex abuse.

Regnerus’s chief funding agency is the NOM-linked Witherspoon Institute.

NOM officials have a long history of conflating homosexuals with pedophiles, a known falsehood.

Nothing can so potently hate-and-fear-monger voters into voting against gay rights, quite like telling them that homosexuals sexually molest children.

REGNERUS DID NOT CONDUCT THE STUDY INDEPENDENTLY OF HIS FUNDERS’ ANTI-GAY POLITICAL GOALS FOR IT

The study design began in 2010.

IRS documents show that Regnerus’s study specifically is a project of Witherspoon’s Program for Family, Marriage and Democracy.

In 2010, when the Regnerus study was in its design phase, W. Bradford Wilcox was director of that Witherspoon program.

Wilcox, who is against contraception, sees social research as a “vindication of Christian moral teaching.”

Wilcox has confessed that in 2010, he was involved in the design of the Regnerus study.

Wilcox’s confession was forced into the open by accumulating evidence of scientific misconduct connected to the study, its publication, and Wilcox himself.

However, Wilcox, Regnerus, and Witherspoon president Luis Tellez — who is a NOM board member — are attempting to deny that Wilcox was acting as a Witherspoon agent when he collaborated with Regnerus on study design in 2010.

Even in his confession, Wilcox attempts to deny that he ever engaged with Regnerus about the study in any official Witherspoon capacity.

Wilcox alleges that his title of “Director of the Program for Family, Marriage and Democracy” was an “honorific.”

SOCIOLOGISTS SAY THAT WILCOX IS LYING

Philip Cohen, Ph.D. is Director of Graduate Studies in Sociology at the University of Maryland’s Population Research Center. In a comment under Wilcox’s confession, Cohen said:

“I find this description not credible. I do not think any reasonable auditor or ethical agency would subscribe to the idea that the “director” of an organization was not and [sic] “officer” of it.”

Dr. Andrew J. Perrin is a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He also considers that Wilcox is not being truthful:

“Brad Wilcox’s affiliation with Witherspoon is all over the place, attached to his name in numerous websites, flyers, talk titles, etc., and so it was certainly incumbent upon both Regnerus and Wilcox to recognize the conflict of interest, and it would not have required any significant investigation to note that conflict. If, in fact, Wilcox was one of the peer reviewers of the article, as has been the subject of conjecture, that’s obviously a further conflict.” Dr. Perrin continues: “the idea that this web of associations doesn’t constitute a serious conflict of interest in the publication of the article just doesn’t pass the smell test. The most reasonable explanation, given what we know, is that Wilcox, Regnerus, and others in their circle colluded to make an end run around serious academic review in order to get seriously flawed information into the public eye.” (Bolding added).

Witherspoon, meanwhile, has been desperately attempting to scrub its sites of all evidence of Wilcox’s associations with the Witherspoon Institute.

Wilcox, however, as noted by the sociologist Dr. Perrin, constantly used his Witherspoon Institute affiliation as a resume booster. To see abundant evidence of Wilcox’s affiliations with the Witherspoon Institute, go here.

FRESH DOCUMENTATION SHOWS THAT WILCOX IS LYING

Fresh evidence demonstrates conclusively that Wilcox was indeed working as a Witherspoon official when he collaborated with Regnerus on study design.

Here is that evidence:

At the University of Virginia, Wilcox is Director of the National Marriage Project. Regnerus’s published study says that a “leading family researcher” from the University of Virginia was on Regnerus’s study design team.

This reporter sent an Open Records Act request to Regnerus’s University of Texas, asking for one very specific sort of documentation only. I asked only for Regnerus study consulting contracts that were 1) for study design; and 2) made for anybody from the University of Virginia.

On October 4, 2012, I received a letter from UT.  The letter states that the university has no documents responsive to my request. What that means, is that when Witherspoon program director Brad Wilcox collaborated with Regnerus on study design, he did so as a Witherspoon agent — as a Witherspoon Program Director — not as an independent contractor through Regnerus’s university.

WHY THIS MATTERS SO MUCH

Regnerus and his funders booby-trapped the study against gays for political reasons.

Regnerus and his funders are actively and deliberately seeking to mislead the public into believing that Regnerus conducted his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for the study.

Witherspoon tells that deliberate lie in Question 13 of the stand-alone site it created to promote the Regnerus study.

Regnerus tells that lie right in his published study. Regnerus has written “No funding agency representatives were consulted about research design, survey contents, analyses or conclusions.”

Yet, very, very obviously, when Wilcox was Witherspoon’s Director of the Program on Family, Marriage and Democracy, he was a Regnerus study “funding agency representative.”

Regnerus clearly is lying.

WITHERSPOON, REGNERUS, AND THE STUDY “PLANNING GRANT”

Witherspoon did not just arrange for Regnerus to have his full $785,000 in study funding, and then tell him to do whatever he wanted with it.

Rather, as per Regnerus’s C.V. downloadable from his author’s website, Witherspoon gave Regnerus a $55,000 planning grant before giving him his full study funding.

That means that Witherspoon had to approve Regnerus’s study plan, before it would give him his full study funding.

In the period of the Witherspoon planning grant, Regnerus collaborated with Witherspoon’s Wilcox on study design.

REGNERUS, WILCOX, AND CHILD SEX ABUSE

Regnerus says that his study answers this question:

“Do the children of gay and lesbian parents look comparable to those of their heterosexual counterparts?”

Regnerus’s study methodology, though, did not truly allow for studying children of gay and lesbian parents.

The majority of Regnerus’s study subjects — as per his own admission in his study — were products of opposite-sex couples who later separated, with one parent going on to have a same-sex relationship.

In asking about childhood sex abuse, Regnerus asked his young adult respondents if “a parent or other adult caregiver” ever sexually victimized them.

The result thus is un-interpretable. The respondent’s heterosexual parent, or a babysitter, or a priest could have committed the alleged sexual victimization.

Yet, in their anti-gay attack ads based on the Regnerus study, NOM attributes the alleged child sex abuse exclusively to gay parents. Regnerus himself has done that on national television.

Regnerus alleges that 23% of his study’s children of “lesbian mothers” were sexually victimized as children.

Past studies of lesbian mothers have consistently found low rates of child sex abuse. The second highest rate for child sex abuse in Regnerus’s study is step-families, at 12% just over half that for lesbian mothers.

Regnerus’s “finding” has no credibility. Other of Regnerus’s reported results are just plainly absurd.  In any event, it is impossible to say who committed the alleged sex abuse, and therefore, connecting it to lesbian mothers in any way is defamatory.

To connect a mother to sex abuse of her child, in the public mind, with no knowledge of whether the mother ever abused her child, is as despicable as blaming a rape victim for getting raped.

The numbers seen in Regnerus’s published study are not the same as those in the data files given to him by Knowledge Networks, the company that administered his study’s surveys.

Rather, Regnerus applied weights and controls and used other tools to adjust the number.

To know the correct weights and controls to use, a sociologist must be certain of the percent which the minority he is studying constitutes within the general population.

Regnerus only vaguely described “lesbian mother” or “gay father.” If his respondents said that a parent had ever had “a same-sex romantic relationship,” Regnerus counted them as having either a “lesbian mother” or a “gay father.”

However, there is simply no way to know what percent of the general population has a parent who has ever had “a same-sex romantic relationship.”

That is what one would need to know, in order to be able to apply a correct “weight” or “control” to Regnerus’s raw data.

It is absolutely true, that neither Regnerus nor anybody else knows the correct weights to use for Regnerus’s very vaguely defined, so-called “lesbian mothers” and/or “gay fathers.”

In sum that means; 1)  that in applying weights and controls and other strategies to his raw data; 2) Regnerus and Wilcox were free to play around with theoretical population percents representing children of; 3)  a parent who has ever had a “same-sex romantic relationship,” 4) moving the study’s “finding” number up or down, according to the result that Regnerus and Wilcox most wanted to be able to report to the public.

I directly asked Regnerus to explain to me how he derived his reported finding — that “23% of lesbian mothers’ children are sexually victimized” — from his raw data.

Regnerus refused to answer.

A sociologist who had behaved honestly with his study’s numbers should have no hesitations about explaining how he derived his reported numbers from his data.

DOES REGNERUS’S REFUSAL TO ANSWER THE QUESTION IMPLY GUILT?

Regnerus very willingly gives lengthy, rambling  interviews to right wing religious publications, but refuses to respond to simple, direct, science-based inquiries about his study.

Subsequently, I made an Open Records Act request to UT, asking for all of the Regnerus study’s data analyses communications between Regnerus and Wilcox.

In reaction to that request, UT sent the Texas Attorney General a letter, asking for exemptions to my document request.

The UT letter told the Texas Attorney General that Wilcox was involved with both data collection and data analyses on the Regnerus study.

So, Wilcox was involved in collaborating with Regnerus during many stages of the study, including 1) when the vague way of defining gay parents was settled on; 2) when the vague question about child sex abuse was formulated; 3) when the data was collected, and 4) when the data was analyzed.

It can almost seem funny, that Regnerus claims to have “found” that out of every 2,988 Americans aged 18 to 39, six-hundred and twenty have never once in their lives masturbated.

As obviously untrue as that is, though, Regnerus and his NOM-linked funders and NOM itself are using his equally ridiculous, maliciously invented sex abuse “findings” to demonize gay people and to hate-and-fear-monger voters into voting against gay rights.

REGNERUS IS NOT EVEN MAKING A PRETENSE OF INDEPENDENCE FROM HIS FUNDERS

On November 3, 2012, Regnerus and Witherspoon’s Ana Samuel — a hateful anti-gay bigot — will be appearing together to discuss the study at an event sponsored by a Witherspoon/NOM affiliate, the so-called Love and Fidelity Network.

Love and Fidelity has its office space inside Witherspoon’s building on the Princeton campus. NOM/Witherspoon’s Robert P. George, and Witherspoon/NOM’s Luis Tellez, as well as NOM’s Maggie Gallagher are on the “Love and Fidelity” advisory board.

Also appearing to discuss the study with Regnerus and his funding agency representative Ana Samuel will be Robert Oscar Lopez, who appears to fit into the documented NOM strategy for getting children of gay parents to denounce their own parents to the public.

Regnerus recruited Lopez off the internet, and Lopez’s gay-bashing essay subsequently was published on Witherspoon’s “Public Discourse.”

At the time Lopez’s essay appeared in “Public Discourse,” Brad Wilcox was listed on the roster of the “Public Discourse” editorial board.

After I reported that fact, Witherspoon scrubbed Wilcox’s name off its editorial board roster. Witherspoon previously has been caught scrubbing incriminating, Regnerus-related evidence from its websites.

CONCLUSION

Regnerus, the Witherspoon Institute, and Brad Wilcox all are very deliberately lying to the public,in hopes of misleading the public into believing that Regnerus conducted his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for it.

Regnerus did not conduct his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for it.

Regnerus very actively continues to promote his study with his anti-gay-rights funding agency representatives, while refusing to take any science-based questions about his study from the non-anti-gay-bigot media.

 

New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

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News

‘Out of Order!’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Triggers Shouting Match Between Comer and Top Dem

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April 30, 2025

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Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene ignited a heated confrontation during a budget bill hearing Wednesday by claiming that budgets have nothing to do with policy — a stance that top Democrats have long argued contradicts core American values. Her assertion drew an immediate rebuttal from one of the committee’s top Democrats, but Oversight Chairman James Comer jumped to Greene’s defense, attempting to cut off the correction and escalating the exchange into a shouting match, while mocking Democrats’ efforts to preserve and honor American values.

After U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) made an impassioned plea to not cut the budget of the Veterans Administration, or Social Security, or Medicare in order to produce a $4 trillion tax cut largely for the wealthy — a top Trump priority — Congresswoman Greene lashed out.

“I’d like to point something out that our Democrat colleagues know this, because they did reconciliation before when they are they were in charge and, you know, it may be hard for some of the freshman Dems to understand, but this is not a policy debate,” the Georgia Republican alleged. “That’s not what reconciliation is. This is a budget process.”

“And so for the American people watching at home, our Democrat colleagues are sitting here trying to score points and spread more lies and divisiveness about Republicans in order to spread more garbage across the country,” she charged, calling Democrats’ pleas “entertainment.”

READ MORE: ‘Please Chill This Is Going Great’: Trump Mocked for Blaming Biden Amid Poor Economic Data

That’s when U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat in Congress for nearly a quarter century and possibly next in line for Ranking Member of the Oversight Committee, slammed Greene’s interpretation of the Committee’s work.

“Mr. Chairman, I just want to say, our federal budget reflects our values,” Lynch declared, a statement many budget experts would affirm, and one that has been by President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

“When we fund the VA,” Lynch continued, “it’s not just about numbers. It’s about, it’s about the mission, and the purpose of our budget.”

Chairman Comer appeared to grow angry.

“You do understand our federal budget is $2.5 trillion?” Comer declared, appearing to suggest details like how much spent on veterans was not worth the Committee’s time. “We can’t have ‘values’,” Comer insisted, with the amount of debt the federal government is carrying.

“Reclaiming my time — you don’t get to just interject, Mr. Chairman,” Lynch charged.

You know what? I think you’ve already spoken, so you’re out of order,” Comer declared, hitting his desk with his gavel.

“I will speak,” Lynch, now heated, told the Chair. “You’re about to put our country $4 trillion more than debt.”

“I don’t think you all could find a billion dollars in savings,” Comer alleged.

“Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time. Reclaiming my time,” Lynch again declared.

“You can talk all you want. I want everyone in America to see how much — ” Comer snapped.

“Mr. Chairman. You’re out of order. You’re out of order. You’re the chairman, you’re out of order,” Lynch again charged.

READ MORE: ‘Prices Go Up’: Economist Mocks Treasury Secretary’s ‘Empty Shelves’ Position

“Now, without interruption,” Lynch continued, “what we decide here in the budget is what I’m the point I’m trying to make is it’s not just dollars and cents. It’s about where, where that money goes, and what, what purposes and what, what priorities it reflects. And those, you know, governing is about making decisions, and we we choose to fund things that in this country, we have honored for a very long time, and that, you know, I have to say, in my 25 years in Congress, we have had very little disagreement on funding veteran benefits.”

Lynch went on to lament that “now we’re fighting tooth and tongs — and nail — about whether we’re gonna lay off 80,000 employees at the VA. What I’m saying is that, sure, it’s about the budget, but underlying that budget is is our priorities as a country. What we consider to be worthwhile . And I feel that veterans’ benefits are worthwhile. Veterans, healthcare is worthwhile. The way we treat our federal employees is important. It is intrinsic to be the work of the federal government and how we help the most vulnerable, as well as, you, average everyday Americans on Social Security, on Medicaid.”

Watch the videos below or at this link.


RELATED: As US Economy Shrinks Trump Appears Unaware of Crisis: ‘This Is Biden’s Stock Market’

 

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‘Please Chill This Is Going Great’: Trump Mocked for Blaming Biden Amid Poor Economic Data

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4 hours ago

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April 30, 2025

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President Donald Trump, the Trump White House, and top administration officials are insisting Wednesday’s first quarter negative GDP numbers — showing a contracting economy for the first time in almost three years, since COVID — are actually good news but also the fault of President Joe Biden.

The New York Times characterized President Trump’s first quarter results as “a stunning reversal from the strong growth at the end of last year.”

Speaking at a televised Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, President Trump, reading from notes on the GDP results, said, “you know, you probably saw some numbers today. And I have to start off by saying, that’s Biden. That’s not Trump, because we came in on January just the quarterly numbers, and we came in and I was very against everything that Biden was doing in terms of the economy destroying our country.”

Later, at that same meeting, Trump continued.

The stock market, Trump insisted “in this case is it says how bad a situation we inherited.”

READ MORE: ‘Prices Go Up’: Economist Mocks Treasury Secretary’s ‘Empty Shelves’ Position

Leading economists say President Biden handed President Trump a robust economy — which is now in crisis, much like when President Barack Obama handed Trump a robust economy, which Trump reportedly handed over to Biden in “shambles.”

“I took place, this is a quarter that we looked at today. And I took place, we took, all of us together, we came in on January 20th,” said, Trump, appearing to stumble over his words. “So this is Biden, and you can even say the next quarter is sort of Biden, because it doesn’t just happen on a daily or even hourly basis.”

The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg challenged Trump on those points.

“You frequently took credit for the stock market highs. You said it was a reflection of how well you were doing in the polls, and then after you were elected, you said the stock market highs were a reflection of how well the transition’s going and the American people’s confidence in your incoming administration,” Feinberg declared. “Now, the stock market’s not doing so well, and you’re saying that’s the Biden stock market, yet you are the president. Can you explain that?”

“No,” Trump replied. “I’m not taking credit or discredit for the stock market.”

The negative GDP numbers are for the full months of January, February, and March, so about 20 days short of the full three months took place on President Trump’s watch.

RELATED: As US Economy Shrinks Trump Appears Unaware of Crisis: ‘This Is Biden’s Stock Market’

But even Trump claimed credit for strong stock market numbers before he was sworn in to office — nearly one full year before he was sworn in to office, as political scientist Ian Bremmer noted:

Trump earlier on Wednesday had posted to his Truth Social account, “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

As the Times noted, Peter Navarro, Senior Counselor to the President for Trade and Manufacturing, and a convicted felon who served in the first Trump administration, claimed that the G.D.P. figures “really should be very positive news for America.”

The Times remarked, “Few economists agree.”

It is not just President Trump and his trade architect Peter Navarro, attempting to “spin” the negative numbers.

“Well, look,” Trump White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told C-SPAN on Wednesday, “if you break it down, there is an outsized influence of January in that [GDP] report. Remember, this president wasn’t elected until January 20th. The GDP is a backward looking indicator, but all the other indicators that what we do have from that report and others show that there is a really positive trend for this president’s new golden age that he is unleashing.”

At President Trump’s Cabinet meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised the president’s “momentous” first 100 days and asserted that “American families are finding their financial footing again”—a claim at odds with recent consumer confidence reports, which have fallen to their lowest levels since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bessent also stated that “energy costs are down, mortgage rates have plummeted, and food costs are moving lower.” However, each of those claims is subject to challenge, with data and examples that suggest the opposite in many cases.

In a statement, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed “New Data Reveals Strong Economic Momentum.”

“It’s no surprise the leftovers of Biden’s economic disaster have been a drag on economic growth, but the underlying numbers tell the real story of the strong momentum President Trump is delivering. Robust core GDP, the highest gross domestic investment in four years, job growth, and trillions of dollars in new investments secured by President Trump are fueling an economic boom and setting the stage for unprecedented growth as President Trump ushers in the new Golden Age.”

Aaron Fritschner, Deputy Chief of Staff for U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), observed, “The White House statement on the GDP report simultaneously takes the positions that the economy contracting in the first quarter is both a good thing and Biden’s fault.”

Meanwhile, critics are blasting Trump and his administration.

“If you’re keeping track, Candidate Trump claimed credit for a booming stock market a year before he would ultimately take office, but here President Trump blames his predecessor after 100 days of his stewardship of the economy,” wrote NBC News senior White House correspondent Garrett Haake.

And in an all-caps post, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), the Democrats’ Chief Deputy Whip, appeared to mock Trump: “Last year when the stock market was booming that was because of me but now that I am president the problems are Bidens fault please chill this is going great I’m making deals be patient shortages are fine aaaaahhhhhh.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Great Jobs of the Future’ Are Generations of Family Factory Work Says Commerce Secretary

 

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OPINION

As US Economy Shrinks Trump Appears Unaware of Crisis: ‘This Is Biden’s Stock Market’

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April 30, 2025

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To mark his first 100 days in office — “100 Days of Greatness,” he called it — President Donald Trump threw himself a celebration rally in the swing state of Michigan on Tuesday, declaring he has returned America to a “golden age.”

“The arena was surrounded by banners that read, ‘Investing in America,’ ‘Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!,’ ‘The Golden Age,’ ‘Buy American, Hire American’ and ‘The American Dream is Back,'” The Guardian reported. “Trump’s supporters held signs with slogans such as: ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘Golden Age of America.'”

On Wednesday, the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the American economy shrank in the first three months of 2025, the first time it has done so in nearly three years.

READ MORE: ‘Prices Go Up’: Economist Mocks Treasury Secretary’s ‘Empty Shelves’ Position

“Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025 (January, February, and March), according to the advance estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2024, real GDP increased 2.4 percent.”

Economic experts had predicted 3% GDP growth for the first quarter, (some more, some less, but in that neighborhood) before Trump’s tariffs.

Economists and financial experts are pointing to President Donald Trump’s policies, including his tariff war, as the reason for the contraction.

“Real GDP down. Consumption down. Prices up. It’s very easy to criticize what is happening right in front of your eyes when you’re not in a woke cult,” observed Spencer Hakimian, founder and chief investment officer of the hedge fund Tolou Capital Management.

Hakimian pinned the blame for the economy contracting directly on Trump’s policies.

And pointing to the BEA’s numbers, Hakimian added, “Welcome to the recession.”

While the official “we are in a recession” declaration has not yet been made, some are doing so already, given the multiple forecasts predicting a recession, and some saying a recession is the current best possible outcome America (and possibly the global economy) will see this year.

Conservative commentator David Frum of The Atlantic responded to the economic news.

“Trump pushed the US economy into decline by his ignorance and malice, enabled and abetted by advisers who were variously obnoxious, stupid, cowardly, and/or crazy,” said Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter.

Despite the declarations of experts, President Trump quickly denied responsibility for any economic pain, and, appeared to not understand the issue.

Forty-three  minutes after the economic news — a contraction of gross domestic product — had been announced, Trump declared the “stock market” problem was not his but his predecessor’s.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” the President claimed on Truth Social. “I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

The issue is not the stock market—although the markets tanked upon news of an economic contraction—but the actual economy.

READ MORE: ‘Great Jobs of the Future’ Are Generations of Family Factory Work Says Commerce Secretary

“CEOs of major retail giants warned last week that prices would rise and shelves would soon fall empty if the president didn’t reverse course,” The Daily Beast reported Thursday. “The S&P 500 is down 8 percent since Trump’s inauguration—its worst run during a president’s first 100 days in office in more than 50 years. Some financial analysts worry the U.S. is heading toward recession.”

The President appears to be in denial.

During his first 100 days interview with ABC News, which aired Tuesday evening, senior national correspondent Terry Moran told Trump tourism is down.

Trump refused to believe him, despite the facts that prove this have been freely available for weeks.

Economist Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics and public policy, posted charts showing tourism “cratering,” along with video of Trump insisting tourism is up.

Despite all the economic data and expert predictions, despite what we now see as an economic contraction, and some say a looming recession, President Trump is steadfast in his position.

ABC’s Moran told the President, “with the economy, the number one issue for so many people, for just about everybody. It — it’s one of the main reasons that you’re back in this office. And now we have this trade war with China that — that Moody’s and other analysts say is gonna cost American families thousands of more dollars per year. And there is a lot of concern out there. People are worried, even some people who voted for you, sayin’, ‘I didn’t sign up for this.’ So how do you answer those concerns?”

“Well,” Trump replied, “they did sign up for it, actually.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Lying Again’: Hegseth Ripped for Ending ‘Woke Biden Initiative’ Trump Signed Into Law

 

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