Well, Trump did once say “Oh look at my African-American over here” at a rally in California.
That poor guy must be really bummed now that Trump has a new African American.
I heard a few minutes of this (at 1:45 into the show), and while Hannity was excoriating the Obama economy, it sounded like he made the following claims:
-
That the labor participation rate reached historical lows under Obama, and is now at record highs under Trump, and
-
That the economy has added 1M manufacturing jobs under Trump.
Did I mishear our host? All of these are far from correct - not close to passing the smell test - and easily shown to be wrong on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. In reality, the participation rate did not hit record lows under Obama (not even close), and the current rate is exactly the same (62.9%) as when Trump took office. In addition, the preliminary data shows ~380k manufacturing jobs added since January 2017 which is very welcome, but far from 1M. From the post-recession low, however, over 900k manufacturing jobs were added before Obama left office.
I hope that I misheard.
To the first, he most certainly did claim that. I noted that he used slightly different verbiage than saying “now, labor participation is at the highest level it has ever been!”.
And yes, he is factually incorrect - the labor participation rate is the same as it was when Obama left office. However, there are MORE people out of the labor force NOW than when Obama was president.
As to my last statement, that’s just demographics. People are retiring and that number is going to continue to rise.
Do you think that Hannity was claiming that there are more people employed now than in history? That’s probably technically correct, but quite a goalpost move from talking about labor participation rate.
I think that’s the slight shift he made in the language.
“And now there are more people participating than ever before!”
However, no transcript.
Right after the election.