Since Joe Biden took office, he has consistently tried to take credit for record-breaking job growth. To hear him tell it, his job creation record is better than any of his predecessors over the past four decades by a long shot. As of this year, he claims to have created 14 million jobs since assuming office.
It's a complete mirage, of course. Otherwise, he'd be sailing smoothly to reelection. But he's not. Polls show him trailing Trump nationally and in battleground states. Not only that, but voters overwhelmingly trust Trump over Biden on the issue of the economy.
What's behind the disparity between Biden's claims of unmatched job creation and Biden's approval ratings on the economy? Just as CNN. Even the Biden-loving network had to fact-check, pointing out that he "took office in an unusual pandemic context that makes meaningful comparison to other periods very difficult."
Despite the fact-checks proving Biden isn't being honest by saying he created 14 million jobs, he continues to repeat it over and over, hoping to convince the public the economy is strong, even as they struggle to afford groceries, gas, and utilities.
Related: Biden’s Worst Lies From the Past Year
Perhaps you can't blame Biden and the White House for thinking that they can just repeat a lie often enough in the hopes of making it a truth. Frankly, their economic messaging all around is so bad, they really have no choice.
This week, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre was asked to respond to recent red flags in the economy — namely the mass layoffs that have been happening.
"So UPS is cutting 12,000 jobs," a reporter began. "Wayfair is cutting 13% of their workforce. Macy’s, Amazon, Google, Citibank, Blackstone — they're all announcing layoffs. The president talks about how he’s added back all the jobs lost in the pandemic and created 5.4 million jobs. What’s the level of concern that 2024 will be that wave of layoffs that we’re going to start to see?"
"So look, I — I’m certainly not going to speak to every company that you just named. But if you look at — and you just stated, if you look at under this — obviously, he takes that very seriously — any layoff. Right? He understands what that means to a family and how that could affect a family," Jean-Pierre began. "But the president has also done a lot of work to get this economy going again. Right? He’s done a lot of work to make sure that this economy is — is being built from the bottom up, middle out. He’s put — if — some of this piece of legislation that I’ve talked about talks about making sure that, you know, workers are — are being paid fairly — right? — that wages are — are competitive — right? — that — that there are good-paying union jobs. And we see that. We see that."
Are you following that nonsense? You can practically hear the wheels spinning in her head as she attempts to rattle off talking points while avoiding answering the question she clearly had no idea how to answer.
If that wasn't brutal enough to get through, she wasn't done.
"So it’s not just those 14 million jobs. Many of those jobs are good-paying jobs — right? — that meet the moment that — that the Americans need," she continued. "And re — let’s not forget, when the president walked into this administration, the economy was in a tailspin. He had to turn that around. He had to turn that around. So obviously, we’re always concerned hearing about layoffs, but at the same time, we are trying to build an economy that works for all and leaves no one behind."
Karine Jean-Pierre on recent layoffs at UPS, Macy's, Amazon, Google, Citi, Blackstone: "When the president walked into this administration, the economy was in tailspin. He had to turn that around." pic.twitter.com/TqWr6djNvP
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 6, 2024
She certainly spent a long time saying words without actually saying much substance or anything based on truth. The economy was actually already recovering from the pandemic shutdown when Biden took office. It wasn't "in a tailspin" as she has claimed many times before.
Yet if the economy is so great, as the administration claims, it stands to reason that these layoffs wouldn't be happening. Her answer was complete garbage. If he's done a lot for the economy, where are the results? Nobody buys the 14 million jobs number, so they need to come up with something.
And as Jean-Pierre made clear, they have nothing.
