Critics of President Biden got a surprise on Friday, as the New York Times published a report grilling the 46th president for making exaggerations about his successes on the economy.
Times reporters Alan Rappeport and Jim Tankersley published a piece on Friday titled, “As Elections Approach, Biden Spins His Economic Record,” which claimed that the president’s boasts about his economic achievements were not true.
The report began by summing up the White House economic spin, “As President Biden and his administration have told it in recent months, America has the fastest-growing economy in the world, his student debt forgiveness program passed Congress by a vote or two, and Social Security benefits became more generous thanks to his leadership.”
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The piece declared, “None of that was accurate.”
The report also claimed, “The president, who has long been seen as embellishing the truth, has recently overstated his influence on the economy, or omitted key facts.”
It then mentioned an erroneous claim recently made by the White House on Social Security. Quoting Biden and then correcting him, the Times said, “’On my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks,’ he declared. The problem: That increase was the result of an automatic cost-of-living increase prompted by the most rapid inflation in 40 years.”
The piece added, “Mr. Biden had not done anything to make retirees’ checks bigger — it was just a byproduct of the soaring inflation that the president has vowed to combat.”
The official White House Twitter account made that same claim about Social Security this week, receiving a swift, community-based fact check from Twitter. The White House then took the tweet down.
Further skewering Biden, the Times stated that although “It is common for presidents to spin economic numbers to improve their pitch to voters,” “the president’s cheerleading has increasingly grown to include exaggerations or misstatements about the economy and his policy record.”
The piece did insist that Biden’s “economic exaggerations generally pale in comparison to the tales spun by his predecessor, President Donald J. Trump,” though the very fact that a major liberal media outlet would go after Biden on falsehoods, turned heads on social media.
Conservative journalist Michael Caputo encouraged the paper to go further: “Go ahead say it, NYTimes, do it. You can say it: Biden is a liar.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., tweeted, “I’m suspicious of NYT’s motivation for printing the truth about Biden. It’s out of character for them. Perhaps blaming him and his gaffs for the midterm results is the beginning of the left’s effort to replace him with a different nominee in 2024.”
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Brian Riedl appreciated the authors for their honesty in reporting the piece. He tweeted, Credit to @arappeport and @jimtankersley for reporting on the White House’s record of economic misinformation. Its getting worse, and even this article barely scratches of surface of the dishonesty they produce on economic policy, which goes well beyond normal political spin.”
RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway tweeted, “it’s happening dot gif.”
Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon surmised that Democrats are tired of their president. He wrote, “They’ve seen enough.”
Former Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller remarked, “Even NYT says Biden is a liar. Vote out the Biden lackeys on Tuesday.”
Wall Street Journal film critic Kyle Smith sarcastically tweeted, “Surely not.”
National Review’s Jeff Blehar commented, “don’t blame this poor old man it’s not his fault.”
