Spinsanity: Wasserman Schultz claims unemployment has not gone up under Obama

Here’s Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the woman who also chairs the DNC, on Fox and Friends this morning in a somewhat lively exchange with morning co-host Gretchen Carlson:

Gretchen Carlson, FOX News: Unemployment has gone up precipitously since he took office.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC Chair: That is simply not true. In fact, unemployment has now dropped below 9%. It’s continuing to drop. He’s been focused on —

Carlson: It’s higher than when they promised the stimulus would lower it to 8%.

Wasserman Schultz: You see, that narrative doesn’t work for you anymore, though, because —

Carlson: It’s not my narrative. I’m just talking about facts.

Wasserman Schultz: You just said the unemployment rate is going up since Obama took office, and it hasn’t.

Carlson: Is unemployment higher since President Obama took office?

Wasserman Schultz: What’s happened since President Obama took office —

Carlson: Is unemployment higher than when he took office?

Wasserman Schultz: Unemployment is nearing right around where it was when President Obama took office and it’s dropping. You just said it’s been increasing and that’s not true.

For laughs, here’s video of the back and forth:

As the old saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Steve Goldstein at WSJ’s MarketWatch blog explains:

A charitable defense may be that she was initially reacting to the word “precipitously.” But she later in the interview flat out denied that the unemployment rate rose during the Obama administration, which it has.

The jobless rate has gone up from 8.2% in February 2009, the first full month Obama was in office (it was 7.8% in Jan. 2009), to 8.6% last month, having peaked at 10.1% in October 2009, as the chart on the bottom of the story shows.

The president himself in an interview on “60 Minutes” said the unemployment rate may drop to 8.0% by the time voters get to decide whether he deserves a second term.

Guy Benson at Town Hall adds:

Approximately two million fewer jobs exist in America today than when President Obama took office, even as millions of discouraged worker have abandoned the labor force.  This sobering phenomenon is what accounted for much of the illusory drop in the November unemployment rate; nearly three times as many people fled the workforce as added jobs last month.  Righty Jim Pethokoukis from AEI andWaPo Lefty Ezra Klein agree: If the labor force had simply remained static since January 2009, the current unemployment rate would be 11 percent.

The Democrats are going to continue to try and peddle to the American people a whole bunch of lies and “half-truths” in order to try and get their celebrity “leader” Barack Obama re-elected, and while they’ll get away with some of those lies due in part to not only the complexity of certain issues but also thanks to a willingly complicit mainstream media, this is one that won’t hold water even to those who don’t pay that much attention to current events. And because we know Democrats will say whatever it takes to maintain their hold of the White House, let’s hope that Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz will keep on spouting out false facts and figures that are just as easy to see through by the Average Joe as this one was.

Ed Morrissey quips:

Maybe the DNC should consider having a chair who has some connection to reality. But what fun would that be for the rest of us?

Exactly.