Biden Falsely Claims ‘My Economy’s Better Than Trump’s’

During his first interview since announcing his 2024 reelection campaign, President Joe Biden falsely claimed that his economy is better than his predecessor’s during comments about his refusal to negotiate with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on the debt ceiling.

Biden began the MSNBC interview with what critics have said are “brain malfunctions,” and quickly moved on to smearing former President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress.

Speaking on the network’s Friday broadcast of “The 11th Hour,” Biden claimed that “no one’s ever tied” the budget to raising the debt ceiling — referring to McCarthy’s debt ceiling resolution that would require the federal government to make budget cuts in exchange for Biden’s demand to raise the debt ceiling. While McCarthy’s Limit, Save, Grow Act would lift the debt ceiling through early 2024 while also saving the government roughly $4.8 trillion over the next ten years, the president has demanded that the GOP-led House agree to raising the debt ceiling with no limitations or conditions.

Biden and other White House officials have repeatedly stated that the president will not agree to negotiate or meet with McCarthy at all in regard to the debt ceiling, as they expect him to just give in to their demands. During the MSNBC appearance, Biden continued to refuse to negotiate — referring to the Limit, Save, Grow Act as “ridiculous” and the “Republican MAGA budget.”

“[T]he idea someone, for the first time, is saying, unless you pass this ridiculous budget I have — which is the way I would characterize what the Republican MAGA budget is — unless you pass this budget, we’re not going to increase the debt limit and we’re going to go bankrupt, we’re going to — the United States of America is going to renege for the first time in history on its debt,” he rambled. “And you just can’t — no one’s ever tied them together before. I’ve said to the Republican leader, here’s the deal: Take the debt limit, pass it like you did three times when Trump was president, and he increased the whole national debt for 200 years by 40%.”

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle lightly pushed back on his comments, asking: “Republicans would argue, though, that Donald Trump, at the very least, they would say, played ball. You’re not willing to play ball, they would say.”

Biden responded by pushing the typical left-wing talking points about Trump’s presidency, smearing the Trump economy by only judging it based on the COVID-era numbers, not everything that he accomplished prior to the pandemic. He also once again tried to cite “new jobs” as evidence of a good economy under his leadership, despite the fact that many of the jobs supposedly created under his administration were actually just people going back to work after the pandemic restrictions were lifted.

“Play ball? He ballooned the debt, he created unemploy[ment],” Biden claimed. “Look, when I came to office, we had incredibly high unemployment, we were in a situation where we had very little movement on anything going on. And look at the employment rate now. Just today, 250,000 new jobs, highest participation in 75 years of women in the job market, lowest unemployment rate for African Americans. Things are moving.”

Biden conveniently left out the fact that inflation has hit a 40-year-high under his administration, and he has presided over numerous crises — including a massive supply chain crisis. He also forgot about recent data showing that the U.S. economy slowed significantly from January through March, decelerating to just a 1.1% annual pace — while economists had expected overall GDP to grow at a 1.9% pace in the January-March quarter. Meanwhile, numerous polls have shown that voters think Trump did a better job at handling the economy than Biden has.