Sacks’ prediction was that if the COVID‑era U.S. recovery was V‑shaped by the November 2020 election, Donald Trump would be a “shoo‑in” for re‑election.

By late 2020, many in Trump’s own camp were explicitly describing the rebound as a V‑shaped recovery, pointing to record Q3 GDP growth (+33.1% annualized after a ‑32.9% collapse in Q2) and strong stock‑market gains. Republican materials from the House Ways and Means Committee touted the Q3 bounce as “historic growth” pointing to a V‑shaped recovery. (cnbc.com) However, the recovery was incomplete: the unemployment rate was 6.9% in October 2020, nearly double the 3.5% rate in February, and only about 54.5% of the 22.2 million jobs lost from February to the trough had been regained. (bls.gov) Real GDP in Q4 2020 remained about 2.4% below its pre‑pandemic peak in Q4 2019, and did not rise above the pre‑COVID level until mid‑2021. (cbpp.org) Other observers, including Joe Biden, instead characterized the pattern as a K‑shaped recovery, reflecting its unequal impact. (aljazeera.com)

Crucially, regardless of how one labels the recovery’s “shape,” Trump did not win re‑election. Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 and a popular‑vote margin of over 7 million. (britannica.com) Since the economic rebound was widely portrayed by Trump’s own team as V‑shaped yet Trump was not a “shoo‑in” and in fact lost, Sacks’s conditional prediction did not come true. Therefore, it is best scored as wrong.