The Media Research Center’s Joseph Vazquez spent the end of the Biden administration complaining that non-right-wing media outlets pointed out that the economy isn’t quite as bad as Donald Trump (and the MRC) told you it was during the presidential campaign. He huffed in a Jan. 8 post:
Someone needed to fill the delusional, pretentious void left by Paul Krugman at The New York Times to tell Americans they’re too stupid to realize the God-Bless-America awesomeness of the Biden economy. It looks like Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker volunteered.
Baker used a Jan. 5 news item to clap back at President-elect Donald Trump for denigrating Bidenomics and wound up insulting Americans in the process. “President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.” In other words, darn those uneducated plebeians! But it got worse. Baker took his insulting nonsense a step further: “[T]he America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.” Uh, What?! [Emphasis added.]
Baker, of course, adopted a typical Krugman strategy of blurting out cherry-picked statistics devoid of context: “Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best.” He also propagandized how “roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.”
Oy vey, where do we begin? First, the so-called growth Baker is alluding to is misleading. Much of that economic growth is being bolstered by a government debt bomb. What’s amazing is that Baker even conceded in a buried paragraph that “the national debt has ballooned so much that it now represents a larger share of the economy than it has in generations, other than during the pandemic itself.” Hello! [Emphasis added.]
Vazquez returned for a Jan. 9 post:
Our readers are well aware that one of MRC Business’s biggest pet peeves has been the extent to which the leftist media went to bat for the insanity of Bidenomics the past four years. But The Washington Post’s pseudo-conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin is arguing like they just discovered its made-up stroke of genius yesterday.
“Surprise! The media just discovered Bidenomics works,” railed Rubin in yet another senseless screed published Jan. 9. “Trump is getting a strong economy. If only the media had explained the Biden economic achievements,” Rubin whined, as if simping for Bidenomics wasn’t exactly what the media have been doing throughout President Joe Biden’s entire term, including her own newspaper. Was she living under a rock this whole time?
Her delusional reference to “Biden economic achievements” is also nothing short of laughable, given the inflation-laced nightmare Biden’s policies stimulated in the first place and is still reverberating throughout the U.S. economy.
One of the examples she used to support her premise was New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker’s insulting Jan. 5 news item, which bloviated how the Biden economy was supposedly great whether voters knew it or not. Then came the kicker from Rubin: “Gosh, you are not alone if you are wondering where such upbeat reporting has been for the past few years.” Is she serious?
Vazquez went on to cherry-pick numbers forwarded by right-wing writers and economists to claim the economy is “a very mixed bag.” In fact, the Brookings Institution documented that compared with other G10 countries, “the U.S. has seen substantially more economic growth and more investment, but with slightly higher price levels in the initial years of the recovery.”
Vazquez’s crusade continued in a Jan. 14 post:
Washington Post White House Bureau Chief Toluse Olorunnipa had a bout of the heebie-jeebies over history potentially not giving President Joe Biden the, er, “credit” his economic policies deserve.
Oh, Biden’s getting credit alright, just not in the way Olorunnipa intended.
“Biden’s agenda had a big impact. Will history give him credit,” read Olorunnipa’s Sunday propaganda piece disguised as a news item that also made its way into the Monday print edition of The Post.Olorunnipa mourned that Biden’s irresponsible infusion of trillions of dollars into the economy that set inflation on a collision course with people’s wallets wasn’t enough to give Democrats the boost they needed in the 2024 elections. “As construction cranes rise above Liberty and dozens of other Trump-friendly towns, the White House is grappling with the reality that the trillions injected into the economy by Biden’s policies did little to boost his party.”
All the supposed benefits, legacies, and perks of Bidenomics, lamented Olorunnipa, were now “in the hands of those who will only see benefits years or decades after he leaves office.” In other words, of course Biden’s policies were great, just wait about 10 years or so and you’ll see how God-Bless-America fantabulous they actually were!
Vazquez called in a right-winger for backup:
Let’s once again — for the umpteenth time — review some of those so-called benefits. As Heritage Distinguished Visiting Fellow Andy Puzder pointed out December 20, “the federal debt is 121% of our gross national product—the level at which it peaked during World War II,” the equivalent of a “house of cards.” And that’s just one, er, “benefit.” In fact, whatever so-called economic growth has occurred is being bolstered by the fact that there’s been an explosion in government debt, underscoring the existence of underlying weakness. More than half of Americans are struggling to pay bills and save money in the Biden economy due to a persistent cost-of-living crisis.
The next day, Vazquez found a New York Times writer who wasn’t Paul Krugman to lash out at:
New York Times writer Peter Coy once again kissed the ring of Bidenomics by actually having the gall to bemoan in writing how President Joe Biden wouldn’t be remembered for the marvelous way he handled the economy.
We’re still waiting for the punchline.
Coy mourned the “Tragedy of Joe Biden” in a January 10 column, crying over how Biden was essentially relegated to the background “like a ghost — stiff, wan, often unseen by the public.” Coy didn’t get to the second paragraph before turning his piece into a comedy strip, “It is a crushing end to his presidency. He had some remarkable achievements when it comes to the economy, but he couldn’t shape the narrative around his own record.” Uh, that’s because the economy doesn’t agree with this narrative. After Coy complained against voter “disappointment” standing in the way of Biden’s greatness, he then dropped the following acid: “In reality, Biden’s handling of the economy was good, if not great.” [Emphasis.]
Newsflash Coy: Telling voters they’re detached from reality when they’re the ones struggling to make ends meet in the inflation-rattled economy caused by Biden arbitrarily injecting trillions of dollars into it is not a winning message. “Stubborn facts, it seems, are no match for stubborn perceptions,” wrote Coy. Talk about cringe.
Vazquez was in denial that the U.S. economy is doing better than that of other major countries:
Coy celebrated how the U.S. supposedly “had the strongest economic growth in the Group of 7 wealthy, industrialized nations in 2023 and was projected to be No. 1 again in 2024, the International Monetary Fund projected in October.” Of course, Coy didn’t mention the exploding national debt once in his piece, nor that it was a significant driver behind much of the so-called “growth.” Even Coy’s colleague, Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker, conceded in his own piece lecturing voters on Bidenomics that the national debt now “represents a larger share of the economy than it has in generations, other than during the pandemic itself.” Yeah, try a debt-to-GDP ratio of 123 percent. There’s another problem with Coy’s argument, if you want to call it that.
Vazquez concluded by sneering, “Take your pills, Coy.” How do they compare to the pills Vazquez takes to keep his brain tied to being a loyal Trump Regime Media shill?