Kayleigh McEnany has appeared to fault President Biden for not yet recouping all the jobs lost under Donald Trump.
“It is a train wreck on every single level,” Ms McEnany, a former Trump White House press secretary, said on Fox News on Tuesday. “They’re still 3 million jobs short, by the way, of where we were pre-pandemic.”
The Covid-19 pandemic began in late 2019 and devastated the United States economy in the spring of 2020 – all of which happened while Mr Trump was still president. While it is true that the US economy has still not recovered all the jobs it had before Covid, the idea that Mr Biden is to blame for this struck many Twitter users as disingenuous.
“She’s admitting how bad her administration was without directly saying it,” one viewer commented.
“Next she’ll complain President Biden hasn’t brought back all the lives lost because of the Trump administration,” another noted bitterly.
From February to April 2020, as the coronavirus invaded America, the US economy lost 22.4 million jobs. Since then, it has gradually regained most of those jobs – specifically, 18.8 million of them. Some of that progress took place under Mr Trump, and some of it has been under Mr Biden.
So in a literal sense, Ms McEnany is correct – the economy is still 3.6 million jobs short of where it was before the pandemic. But those jobs were not lost during Mr Biden’s presidency.
Or, as one Twitter user paraphrased her, “‘Why haven’t you put out the fire that I started?’”
Another way of looking at the numbers is that when Mr Trump left office, the US economy had experienced a net loss of 3 million jobs since his presidency began. Under Mr Biden, by comparison, the economy has gained 6.4 million jobs since he entered the White House – and there are still three years left in his term.
On Twitter, users mocked Ms McEnany’s selective use of statistics.
“That’s not the win she thinks it is…” one commented.
Ms McEnany served as Mr Trump’s White House press secretary from 2020 to 2021. Last week, she reportedly became one of the few former Trump officials to willingly speak to the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
