We’ve shown how Media Research Center writer Joseph Vazquez is too tethered to right-wing talking points to admit that the economy under President Biden wasn’t as bad as he gets paid to claim otherwise, so he lashes out at anyone who pointed out that fact — while ignoring that the post-pandemic economy in the U.S. has been much stronger than that of other G10 countries. Turns out he did even more of this narrative-pushing well before Biden’s term ended. He huffed in an Oct. 11 post:
Politico managed to make itself the butt of a really bad joke when it made a desperate attempt to prop up Vice President Kamala Harris by selling Bidenomics as the best thing since sliced bread before the November election.
Politico’s tone-deaf Oct. 10 headline of its asinine story spoke for itself, and simultaneously condescended to its readers: “Harris is riding a dream economy into the election. It may be too late for voters to notice.” Ah, another media diatribe about how struggling Americans are just too stupid to see how star-spangled awesome the Biden-Harris economy is, eh Politico? The dense outlet’s X post of its story got brutally ratioed six ways to Sunday with over 3,000 comments and just over 500 likes. Fox News contributor Joe Concha was one of the many commentators who tore Politico’s absurd take to shreds: “A dream economy? You guys and gals have really outdone yourselves. Take a bow and enjoy the ratio.”
Vazquez failed to disclose that Concha is a right-winger who would attack that take for partisan reasons. Vazquez served up more partisan narrative adherence in a Nov. 5 post:
Americans struggling to pay bills? Record credit card debt? High grocery prices? Higher cost of living? No problem! A Washington Post columnist is idiotically claiming Americans are better off economically than they were four years ago.
Washington Post columnist Heather Long decided to gaslight voters one more time before they head to the polls to decide who will run the White House for the next four years. “As Election Day arrives, the data is clear: Americans are better off economically than they were four years ago,” read Long’s ridiculous opening paragraph for her Nov. 4 item. She must have realized the insanity of her claim because she then resorted to telling voters they were better off whether they knew it or not: “I understand many people aren’t feeling it because of the inflation hangover that has left prices noticeably higher than they were in 2020. But it’s important to step back and assess the full picture.” It’s as if Long is trying her hardest to channel her inner Paul Krugman.
Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni blasted Long’s reality-challenged propaganda in comments to MRC Business. “It’s easy for the elites to approve of the last four years, especially regarding economic policy, because they have not been devastated by the fallout of this administration’s mistakes,” Antoni rebuked. “For the average American, however, it has been four years on the path to impoverishment. Cherry-picked figures and erroneous data provided by the government cannot overcome widespread disapproval on the economy in opinion polling.”
But aren’t Vazquez and Antoni cherry-picking figures and their own preferred (and likely erroneous) data? Vazquez is not going to admit that inconvenient fact — his biased narrative comes before the truth.
Vazquez raged in a Nov. 21 post:
If you thought the leftist media couldn’t get any dumber with their pro-Bidenomics propaganda following President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping electoral victory, TIME magazine just took a shot at one-upping everybody.
TIME’s asinine Nov. 14 headline spoke for itself, “Don’t Give Trump Credit for the Success of the Biden Economy.” The bloviating piece, which took two authors to cough up, attempted to blame Trump for the pandemic economy Biden oversaw and spun that Trump’s second term, in contrast, would be riding on the coattails of Biden’s imaginary successes.
“President-elect Trump is receiving the strongest economy in modern history which is the envy of the world,” authors Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques gaslighted. That’s a funny way to characterize an economy where the dollar is losing about a fifth of its value as the Biden administration continues to buoy the economy with an explosion of government debt.
He concluded by ranting: “TIME can take Biden’s so-called “success” and shove it.”
Vazquez had a new rant in a Jan. 2 post:
As America heads into the final days of the lame duck administration under President Joe Biden, there are still clueless members of the media trying to sell the clownish concept of Bidenomics to the public as if the 2024 elections were still in full swing.
The Washington Post leadership, unsurprisingly, is no exception.
Post editorial board member Eduardo Porter is spinning his wheels trying to determine why Bidenomics wasn’t a winning message in a Dec. 26 op-ed. After all, wrote Porter in his, er, infinite wisdom: “So many things about the strategy made so much sense.”
In Porter’s distorted worldview, Biden’s inflation-stimulating $1.9 trillion stimulus package “looked like exactly the right bet.” The $739 billion climate change-obsessed and erroneously-named Inflation Reduction Act, along with other spendthrift legislation, appeared “equally adroit — a strategy to address the plight of the many White workers without a college degree who turned out for Donald Trump” in 2016.
The propaganda is strong with this one.
Actually, Vazquez is the real propagandist here. He kept up the propaganda (while accusing others of doing it) in a Jan. 16 post:
The Associated Press’s in-house public relations flunky for President Joe Biden, Josh Boak, is following the dragged out trend of leftist media figures treating Americans like they’re just too impatient to understand the true genius of Bidenomics.
Boak’s January 15 propaganda piece disguised as news, “How Biden’s domestic policy record stacks up against public perception,” was laced with a hodgepodge of excuses and celebratory ramblings about Biden’s economic policies, which he mourned were hampered by a disgruntled voter base.
“President Joe Biden ends his term with a gulf between his policy record and his public reputation,” he wrote.
He implied the disconnect was that Biden was more fixated on long term priorities than on more immediate concerns like the inflation peaking to 40-year highs in 2022, which in turn drove voters up a wall. In essence, implied Boak, the tragedy of Biden is that the effects of his illusory achievements won’t be realized by the agitated voter base until long after he’s left office.
Vazquez was still at it in a Jan. 22 post:
NBC News senior business correspondent Christine Romans is already laying the groundwork for how the stupid media narrative will be spun if the supposedly stellar Biden economy nosedives: blame President Donald Trump.
Romans’ Inauguration Day piece, “The economy starts the year in solid shape. Now it’s in Trump’s hands,” followed the typical course of leftist media regurgitating devoid-of-context data points the Biden White House sticks to its decrepit economic record like a bunch of barnacles.
Then Romans brazenly set the stage for how coverage of Trump’s own record will go: “The president-elect inherits robust growth, sticky but much lower inflation and cooling but sturdy gains in pay and hiring. His policies could affect all those trends and more.”
You think people are that dumb that they can’t see what you’re doing here Romans?
Vazquez apparently thinks we’re so dumb that we can’t see what he’s doing.
UPDATE: Vazquez cranked out one more attack in a Jan. 17 post:
CNN host Fareed Zakaria tried to claim (a) Bidenomics was mind-boggling genius, and also (b) white working-class voters hated it and rejected it in November. So forget those unwashed, uneducated white voters. Democrats should stop trying for those voters and stick to college-educated women and minorities.
The host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS bellowed in a January 17 op-ed for The Washington Post that Biden’s spendthrift economic catastrophe was actually “a resounding success.” But, alas, as Zakaria lectured in his ridiculous headline, “Biden failed to win the working class. Democrats might want to stop trying.”
Of course, Zakaria’s idea of Biden’s “success” was no different from the same tired list of factual obfuscations the media have been peddling lately, which obscure the damning context that ends up condemning Biden’s supposedly “working-class”-engineered policies for the economic wrecking machines they actually were. But, given the election results, snorted Zakaria, “Perhaps [Democrats] should lean into their new base and shape a policy agenda around them, rather than pining for the working class Whites whom they lost decades ago.”
Wow, talk about verbal diarrhea from an elitist snob looking down his nose at everybody else, which makes sense given that Zakaria is worth about $14 million.
[…]As bad as Zakaria’s take was, it was compounded by his misleading spewage of White House talking points to bolster his argument that Bidenomics was the best thing since sliced bread. “Entering office as the pandemic still raged, he presided over the creation of almost 17 million jobs with inflation nearing the Fed’s 2 percent target. Productivity is up, wage inequality is down, small business formation is at record levels and wage growth is outpacing inflation,” Zakaria claimed.
FactCheck.org and Snopes — two leftist fact-checkers — didn’t even let Biden get away with inflating his record on jobs, as Zakaria did.
Vazquez’s fixation on supposed “verbal diarrhea” was reflected in his headline: “Zakaria’s Diarrhea.” (Which doesn’t even rhyme, despite his suggestion to the contrary.) Looks like Vazquez, not Zakaria, is the one who has an issue with “spewage.”