Or rather, instead of putting more money into their economy by printing it, which was working extraordinarily well, they instead decided to pull money back out with a huge rise in a regressive tax.
"Real GDP" is some kind of economic truther term. If you can sell debt at a low interest rate, whatever paper you've generated is "real" because the market is still buying it.
To be fair, "real GDP" has a somewhat precise economic meaning as measuring GDP while taking inflation into account; i.e., take nominal GDP and divide it by some measure of inflation (it is only somewhat precise because one can quibble about which inflation measure should be used).
In general though, you are right that especially "real growth", as the antonym of "fake growth", is often used in a way that has economic truther feel to it.
"Real GDP" is some kind of economic truther term. If you can sell debt at a low interest rate, whatever paper you've generated is "real" because the market is still buying it.