Mick Mulvaney couldn't lie his way out of this one.
Trump Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney tried to defend Trump's record on job creation — and was confronted with a harsh dose of reality by none other than Fox News anchor Chris Wallace.
On this week's edition of "Fox News Sunday," Wallace told Mulvaney about a "surprising statistic" he'd learned this week.
"3.4 million jobs have been added during the first 19 months of the Trump administration, but 3.7 million jobs were added during the last 19 months of the Obama administration," Wallace said. "More jobs. So, in fact, there hasn't been a spike in jobs created under this president."
Mulvaney tried, and failed, to explain away those very clear numbers.
"Keep in mind that when you're coming back from a recession, it's actually easier to do that," Mulvaney claimed. "It's easier to do what President Obama had done."
Mulvaney added that the Trump administration believes Obama "wasn't adding enough jobs" — despite the fact that Obama added 300,000 more jobs than Trump did over a comparable time period.
"Wait a minute, sir," Wallace interrupted. "The recession was in 2008. We're talking about 2015 and '16. Seven, eight years into the Obama presidency, versus the first 19 months of the Trump presidency."
Mulvaney tried sticking to his excuse, but was forced to concede that Obama left Trump with a great economy.
"We've [been] able to start at a fairly high level and continue that growth level," Mulvaney said.
But as Wallace had already pointed out, job growth is actually slower under Trump than it was under President Obama.
During Trump's first full year in office, average yearly job growth fell to the lowest level since 2010, when the recovery was just beginning.
By contrast, Obama created almost 16 million jobs during the recovery, including those 3.7 million jobs created during the final year and a half of his presidency.
And despite having the benefit of hindsight, Trump and Mulvaney are pursuing the same failed trickle-down policies that led to the recession, and then some.
Mulvaney's humiliation comes in the same week that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was forced to apologize for outright lying about President Obama's record of creating jobs for black Americans.
Sanders had absurdly claimed that Obama had "only created 195,000 jobs for African Americans" during his eight years in office, when the real total was 15 times that.
It's no wonder Trump and his gang make a second career out of attacking the very concept of truth. The facts are very rarely on their side.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
