Andrew Ross Sorkin Battles Tim Scott Over Trump’s Economy: ‘That’s Just Empirical Math’

CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin challenged his morning show co-anchor Joe Kernen and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) on facts surrounding President Donald Trump’s economy versus that of ex-President Joe Biden. Sorkin battled both Kernen and Scott as to whether not you should compare Trump’s economic performance to the economy Biden left him or to the average economic performance of the economy throughout Biden’s term.

“Because we’ve been talking about the president, and you can like a lot of the policies of the president — I’m not going to dissuade you of those — but just on the basic facts of measuring where we are today versus before… and by the way, I’m getting a lot of emails and texts from people, you know, saying the stock market clearly is better off,” Sorkin offered, adding:

But just on the math: we have more debt, inflation numbers are worse, consumer prices are worse, unemployment is worse, the jobs number is worse. Technically, you could argue the GDP number is stable, slash maybe worse. But that’s just empirical math, and I’m not making a judgment. I’m just saying you’re making it from–

Kernen cut in, saying, “From when he left office.”

“Yes, but when he left office—” Sorkin tried to clarify as Kernen insisted, “His inflation averaged 5%.”

“I understand that. I think that’s why it’s from when he left office, and that’s how people measure it,” Sorkin clarified.

“4.3 to 4.4% unemployment is still… So, that was a total… That was an exercise in sophistry. If you’re comfortable with that, that’s fine. Go ahead, Senator,” Kernen insisted.

“Yeah, Andrew, there’s no doubt — you’ve got to take both presidencies in aggregate. The bottom line is simply this: the average American is losing over $1,000 a month in spending power because of Joe Biden’s policies. The first thing he did as president was pass a $1.9 trillion spending package,” Scott replied.

“If we average all four years of the Biden administration together — I agree,” Sorkin tried to add as Scott finished, “They gave cash away — the bottom line is this: Americans were worse off under President Biden economically than under President Trump. No one got a raise, wages were down.”

“I’m not arguing on behalf of President Biden or anyone else. All I’m suggesting is there are people listening to… Senator,” Sorkin tried to clarify, repeating the point that the economy is worse off now than when Trump started his second term.

“It’s probably bad TV for us to talk over each other, so I don’t want to make your show worse — it’s one of the best shows on TV, guys,” Scott quipped, adding:

But I just want to say this: take the numbers and take a deep look at them. The average American feels better today than they did in the challenging years of the Biden administration, which were basically four challenging years.

“And I think that’s especially true if you have money in the stock market. All I’m suggesting is I think that those measuring from the end of the Biden presidency to today may take a different view — or at least look at the numbers differently,” Sorkin concluded.

Watch the clip above.

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