On Wednesday, President Joe Biden took the very unusual step of submitting to an interviewer who was an actual journalist (not like Howard Stern or Drew Barrymore). It wouldn’t be long before he started mangling his recordâand Donald Trump’s.
CNN reporter Erin Burnett began with how Trump’s promises of new jobs in Wisconsin didn’t come true: âWhy should people here believe that you will succeed at creating jobs where Trump failed?â Biden bragged: âHe’s never succeeded in creating jobs, and I have never failed. I have created over 15 million jobs since I have been president.â He did it all by himself! He claimed that other than Herbert Hoover, Trump’s âthe only other president who lost more jobs than created in his four-year term.â
There’s a massive asterisk; namely, the global COVID-19 pandemic. Trump’s employment record in the first three years of his presidency was strong. The raw number of employed Americans reached records. In October 2018, it had reached more than 156.6 million. The unemployment rate hit record lows across demographicsâfor women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and youth.
Obviously, the severe lockdowns during the pandemicâmost aggressively pushed by the Democrats and their media alliesâdrove massive job losses. Nonfarm payroll employment in the United States declined by 9.4 million in 2020. So, Democrats blame that on Trump, and when the pandemic was over, they took credit for the economy climbing out of that hole.
But that wasn’t Biden’s worst mangle. He claimed to CNN that âno president’s had the run we have had, in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation. It was 9% when I came to office, 9%.â
That’s ridiculous! It’s a baldfaced lie. Inflation was 1.4%, again, due to the pandemic. Burnett didn’t check his facts, during or after the interview. She pushed him to acknowledge inflation was bad, but she didn’t suggest he was lying.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha tweeted: âAnd of course, CNN makes sure its pious fact-checker is nowhere to be found afterward.â
That would be Daniel Dale, who’s almost entirely deployed on TV to âfact-checkâ Trump. Since Trump’s Manhattan trial began in mid-April, Dale has appeared nine times to âcheckâ him. He has not appeared to check anyone else. On April 18, Jake Tapper said, âHe’s handy to have around at times like this.â
Some of these fact checks are âbrag checks.â Trump will say he’s ahead in all the polls, when he’s ahead in most polls. But Dale sounds most exasperated when Trump blames Biden for his legal troubles. On April 18, Dale decried âhis false conspiracy theory that essentially that Joe Biden is behind this case, which was brought by a locally elected district attorney.â
Dale can’t even disclose that District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a Democrat. He acknowledged Trump’s lead prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, was a Biden Justice Department official, and then joined Bragg’s team. A âconspiracy theoryâ between Democrat lawyers looks obvious here and declaring it âfalseâ is a lame spin.
On Tuesday, Dale threw a penalty flag at Trump for saying Bragg is a âSoros-backedâ prosecutorâand Trump didn’t say that in the remarks they’d just aired. Dale turned on the spin machine by saying leftist billionaire George Soros is âa frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theoriesâ and then claimed âat bestâ the money was indirect: Soros donated to the Color of Change PAC, and then the PAC backed Bragg.
If a conservative DA received big money from a pro-Trump PAC, CNN would call him or her âTrump-backedâ without hesitation. CNN deploys Dale not as a âfact-checkerâ as much as a spin spoiler.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.