evidence: One of President Donald Trump’s lesser-known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. [...] Nine days later, he tweeted, "Because of Tariffs we will be able to start paying down large amounts of the $21 trillion in debt that has been accumulated, much by the Obama Administration." [...] Weeks later, the coronavirus crisis erupted and made the financial situation far worse. As of Dec. 31, 2020, the national debt had jumped to $27.75 trillion, up 39 percent from $19.95 trillion when Trump was sworn in. The government ended its 2020 fiscal year with the portion of the national debt owed to investors, the metric favored by the CBO, around 100 percent of GDP. The CBO had predicted less than a year earlier that it would take until 2030 to reach that approximate level of debt. Including the trillions owed to various governmental trust funds, the total debt is now about 130 percent of GDP.