'That’s not true’: Trump confronted by Lesley Stahl over economy claims in first clip from tense interview

President falsely claims US had ‘best economy ever’ while Joe Biden calls for commission to study court system in 60 Minutes clips

In a preview of his interview with 60 Minutes, Donald Trump pointed to economic gains in the US prior to the coronavirus pandemic when asked about his biggest domestic priority heading into Election Day.

“We created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” he said.

Lesley Stahl told him: “You know that’s not true.”

The president said that “virtually every number was the best.”

“We had the best economy ever,” he said. "The priority now is to get back to normal, get back to where we were, have the economy rage with jobs and everybody be happy, and that's where we're going, and that's where we're heading."  

Asked who he believes is the nation’s biggest adversary, he pointed to China. 

“They're a competitor,” he said. "They're a foe in many ways, but they're an adversary. I think what happened was disgraceful, should never have happened … They should never have allowed this plague to get out of China and go throughout the world. 188 countries. Should never have happened."

The president reportedly stormed out of the interview, to be aired by CBS on Sunday along with interviews with his Democratic opponent Joe Biden.

Mr Trump has threatened to release his recordings of his interview with Ms Stahl, who he accused of leading a “vicious attempted ‘takeout’” in their recent interview at the White House.

“Compare my full, flowing and ‘magnificently brilliant’ answers" to the reporter’s questions, he said on Twitter.

On 20 October, he said: “This will be done so that everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about.”

In previews of his interview with CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell in Wilmington, Delaware, Mr Biden said that if elected, he intends to assemble a bipartisan commission to study US courts.

He has faced criticism from the right over his refusal to directly address “court packing" – extending the number of seats on the US Supreme Court to balance its partisan divide – as the Republican-controlled Senate moves swiftly to confirm the president’s third nominee to the high court weeks before Election Day.

“Because it's getting out of whack – the way in which it's being handled and it's not about court packing,” Mr Biden said. "There's a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated and I've looked to see what recommendations that commission might make."

He said “there's a number of alternatives that … go well beyond packing.”

“The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football, whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want,” he said. "Presidents come and go. Supreme Court justices stay for generations."

While the economy had performed strongly following the 2008 financial crisis, the president has not overseen the greatest-ever US economy in his term.

Since taking office, the unemployment rate has plunged to its lowest levels in decades, but gross domestic product – the strongest metric to gauge the economy’s overall strength – has been similar to gains made under his predecessor Barack Obama. Inflation-adjusted GDP per capita increased less than 2 per cent under Mr Trump, making his term in office on average with his precessors.

He had pledged to raise it to 4 per cent.

When he took office in January 2017 there were 145 million working Americans. By the end of 2019, that figure had increased to 152 million, a gain of 6.3 million new jobs.

Using the comparable period in Mr Obama’s second term (from January 2013 to December 2015), the number of jobs also rose by around 7 million, The Independent reported.

A rate of 2.1 million new jobs a year also fell short of his 2016 campaign pledge to create 25 million new jobs over a decade.

The economic fallout from the public health crisis, and the administration’s downplaying of its severity and insufficient relief to workers, has decimated those numbers, jumping to the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression in a deadly April.