‘That’s Just Factually Wrong’: Biden Economic Adviser Battles with Neil Cavuto in Crosstalk-Riddled Interview

Michael LucianoFeb 7th, 2023, 5:42 pm

Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto tangled with White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Cavuto began the interview by pointing to Biden’s low approval ratings when it comes to his handling of the economy, with 61% disapproving according to the latest Fox News poll. The survey was taken before the release of the January jobs report, which showed a gain of 517,000 jobs – well over the anticipated 188,000 or so.

“The backdrop for [the State of the Union] are these polls that seem to show most Americans don’t agree the economy is doing as well as you say, and some of the numbers do validate,” Cavuto told Bernstein. “What do you think’s going on?”

“I think there’s lots of different polls you could pull from,” he replied. “I think the numbers that we think are most important to characterizing this economy from the perspective of working families is how they’re doing. They’ve got real wage gains up over the past seven months, 12.1 million jobs since this president got here, a manufacturing boom, 800,000 jobs since Biden took office in manufacturing.”

Bernstein noted the unemployment rate of 3.4% is the lowest in more than 50 years.

That led to this exchange:

CAVUTO: You mentioned the 12 million new jobs when in fact, the Department of Labor statistics say that those were actually added back-jobs, the jobs that were taken away during Covid–

BERNSTEIN: Yeah, that’s factually wrong.

CAVUTO: Let me pursue it. The jobs actually created were more like 2.7 million. And the same comes to manufacturing jobs when you talk about three-quarters of a million more of them added on. A lot of them are just jobs that came back from what we had now that your gain is smaller than that. A job gain is a job gain–

BERNSTEIN: I’m not gonna–

CAVUTO: Do you think you–

BERNSTEIN: Hold on, Neil.

CAVUTO: –inflate the numbers?

BERNSTEIN: No. So, I’m just not gonna let you blow fog over what is clearly an absolutely stellar economic record, especially in the labor market.

CAVUTO: But are the new jobs–

[CROSSTALK]

BERNSTEIN: Yes, 3.4–

[CROSSTALK]

CAVUTO: But they’re jobs that we had before that we got back post-Covid, right?

BERNSTEIN: Hold on, let me respond, ok? That way we can have a much better dialogue – 3.4% unemployment. That’s the lowest in 53 years. It’s lower than expectations were for this time of year based on forecasts that were me by[the Congressional Budget Office]. So, that’s responsive to your question. We are outperforming where people thought the economy would be. If you look at the long-term job gains over this expansion, we’ve surpassed our pre-pandemic level way before almost any other business cycle on record, at least going back to the 1950s.