Despite the economy being in tatters because of supply chain issues, rampant inflation, surging gas prices and a poor labor force participation rate, President Joe Biden keeps acting as if the economy is performing just fine — better even, he claims, than the demonstrably superior economy of former President Donald Trump.
His recent claims about his allegedly booming economy have grown so fantastical that even CNN is now being forced to fact-check him.
In a tweet posted late Thursday morning, the president touted the creation of five million jobs since January as a great success over his predecessor.
“We’ve created nearly five million jobs since I took office in January. That’s ten times the average monthly rate I inherited from my predecessor, ” he wrote. President Joe Biden continues to lie at virtually every single moment.
President Biden
@POTUS
United States government official
We’ve created nearly five million jobs since I took office in January.
That’s ten times the average monthly rate I inherited from my predecessor.
Not mentioned by the president was that this admittedly high job creation rate is a consequence of the receding coronavirus pandemic, not his policies.
This isn’t the first time the president has pulled this stunt. He tried it in May by claiming at the time that 1.5 million jobs had been created because of him.
At the time, the BBC fact-checked him by noting that the job growth he was highlighting “comes from a low base point given that in April last year, unemployment hit its highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”
“More than 22 million jobs were lost in the space of two months due to the impact of coronavirus,” the fact-check reads.
The impact, more specifically, of a virus that destroyed millions of jobs globally.
“The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown caused 114 million people to lose their jobs over 2020,” according to the World Economic Forum.
And now that the pandemic is slowly receding, job growth is likewise exploding globally, meaning the president cannot reasonably take sole credit — if any credit at all — for an explosion that’s also being seen everywhere else.
What he can take credit for, according to critics, is a recovery that’s been far slower and weaker than it should have been because of the president’s policy prescriptions, including but not limited to the following:
•The president’s decision to extend enhanced unemployment benefits through September.
•The president’s decision to reinstitute an eviction moratorium.
•The president’s decision to pursue a business vaccine mandate.
•The president’s decision to fear-monger over the coronavirus.
•The president’s decision to shut down the Keystone Pipeline.
•The president’s decision to promote massive spending.
Critics say that virtually every policy he’s pursued has harmed the economy.
But instead of being honest, the president continues to lie and distort.
According to him, there is no border crisis, $3.5 trillion in spending costs $0, the vaccinated must be unprotected from the unvaccinated, etc.
His claims have grown so fantastical that even CNN is now fact-checking him sometimes, though not nearly as often as critics say he deserves.
The network fact-checked him just last Saturday. Responding to his recently made claim that Moody’s is projecting his exorbitant spending will somehow create two million jobs per year, CNN reported that the remarks “were misleading.”
“Contrary to Biden’s suggestion, Moody’s did not find that the passage of the two bills would produce an additional 2 million jobs in each successive year. In other words, Moody’s did not find that in 10 years, the economy would have 20 million extra jobs because of Biden’s bills,” the fact-check reads.
“Rather, Moody’s found that in 10 years, the economy would have 2.2 million more jobs if the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a $3.5 trillion spending package were passed than it would if they were not passed,” it continues.
Replying to
@POTUS
Your predecessor relaxed regulations and cut taxes, allowing for the greatest economic boom in the history of this country.
Let’s see how your tax and spend policies do.
The latter tweet was a slick reference to the claim from most economists that the president’s proposed $3.5 trillion in spending will ultimately, despite Moody’s projections, lower wages, economic growth and personal wealth.