Nancy Pelosi became angry with Katy Tur when the MSNBC host got in the way of the former House speaker’s Democratic talking point about job losses during the Donald Trump presidency.
During a Monday appearance on the network, Pelosi lauded President Joe Biden’s record, claiming he “created 9 million jobs in his term in office. Donald Trump has the worst record of job loss of any president. So we just have to make sure people know.”
Everybody, including fact-checkers at The Associated Press and PolitiFact, knows the “job creation” number is a fake statistic that’s based on the number of people returning to work from the government-imposed shutdowns over the coronavirus pandemic.
Likewise, the devastating impact of the pandemic came in the final year of Trump’s term, which had seen three years of the economy booming and low unemployment.
But that doesn’t stop people like Pelosi from spouting it off.
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Tur interjected, “That was a global pandemic” during Trump’s presidency, causing a net job loss of the four-year term.
Pelosi paused, apparently stunned, before raising her voice, poking her hand toward Tur’s face and saying, “He had the worst record of any president. We’ve had other concerns in our country.”
“If you want to be an apologist for Donald Trump, that may be your role, but it ain’t mine,” she added.
Tur countered, “I don’t think anyone can accuse me of that.”
Nancy Pelosi: “Donald Trump has the worst record of job loss of any president.”
MSNBC host Katy Tur: “That was a global pandemic.”
Pelosi: “If you want to be an apologist for Donald Trump, that may be your role, but it ain’t mine.” pic.twitter.com/DLOsYJpwy5
— The Recount (@therecount) April 29, 2024
Pelosi then argued that the Democrats had pumped $3 trillion into the economy, which she claimed helped stimulate it.
Others like former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and former Obama Treasury official Steven Rattner have said all the government deficit spending spiked inflation to levels not seen in 40 years.
The economy was well on its way to recovery when Trump left office in January 2021. The unemployment rate had dropped from a pandemic high of 14.7 percent in April 2020 to 6.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s 3.8 percent now.
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The reason the economy was recovering so quickly is that Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress had put pro-growth tax policy in place that encouraged American businesses to invest and create jobs.
Last summer, Trump offered a more apples-to-apples comparison of the two administrations’ job creation records.
“During Biden’s first 30 months in office, just 2.1 million new jobs were created, and by contrast, during my first 30 months in office, we created a record 4.9 million new jobs,” he said.
A PolitFact report on the statement took issue with both of Trump’s numbers, but the overall point remains.
First, the fact-checker argued that Trump actually sold himself a little short, saying through the first 30 months of his administration, the economy actually created 5.2 million non-farm jobs.
But during the Biden presidency, according to PolitiFact, non-farm jobs increased by 13.2 million — six times more than Trump .
However, the fact-checker did include Trump’s contention that about 11 million of those were really just jobs being added back to reach pre-pandemic levels of employment, which means a net of just over 2 million new jobs created.
It may make Pelosi upset when an MSNBC host gets in the way of her fake talking point, but it’s nice to see truth addressed, even on a left-wing network.
