Minnesota Governor and Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz recently appeared on ABC’s “The View” in an attempt to prop up Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, which is struggling as the election approaches. However, Walz made a claim about former President Donald Trump’s economic record that was so false that left-leaning CNN had to fact-check it.
During his comments on the daytime talk show, Walz tried to claim that it was “factual” that more manufacturing jobs had been lost under former President Trump than any other administration in U.S. history. “We want to make sure that you’re able to bring manufacturing like Kamala Harris is dead. We know Donald Trump lost more manufacturing jobs than any president in American history. That’s simply factual,” Walz said.
In a recent segment addressing the claim Walz confidently touted, CNN analyst Daniel Dale dismantled the vice presidential candidate’s argument. “Well, if you’re going to say something is simply factual, it should be factual. This is not… it’s not true that the Trump presidency lost more manufacturing jobs than any other presidency,” Dale said.
Backing up his fact-check with statistics on manufacturing job losses from other presidential administrations, Dale said, “Under George W. Bush, there were about 4.5 million manufacturing jobs lost under Trump, it was about 178,000 There are also more manufacturing jobs lost than under Trump, under Eisenhower, under Ford, under Reagan.” He added, “So Trump does not have that record.”
Dale further explained that most of Trump’s losses in manufacturing could be blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic which completely uprooted economic activity at the very end of his term. Therefore, Trump maintained a strong economy throughout his presidency, only facing major setbacks as a result of the pandemic, not his policies.
“I think it’s also worth pointing out for context, that these Trump job losses in manufacturing overwhelmingly occurred because of the COVID pandemic. Pre-pandemic, under Trump, there was a gain of about 414,000 manufacturing jobs. Again, he ended a negative 178,000. But that was largely because we had a pandemic related crash,” the analyst said.
Users on social media reacted to the fact-check from CNN, blasting the Harris-Walz campaign for continually touting false narratives about Trump. One person wrote, “Walz-Harris just pluck a lie out of the hopper and stick with it. They never give it up. Charlottesville fine people. Heritage Project 2025. Lop-sided J6 Insurrection. Federal abortion ban. I would never ban fracking. Medicare SS reduction. I worked at McDonald’s. Middle-class background hits.”
Watch the major fact-check against Walz from CNN below:
Others drew attention to the seeming increase in fact-checks against Harris and Walz from the mainstream media which has historically been hostile to Trump. “Wow. People on here have said to look for MSM to begin to turn on Harris/Walz starting this week due to internal polling. Those people might be right. A month ago, CNN wouldn’t have fact checked this and would let it slide under the radar,” one user commented. Another person added, “I listened to Walz say Trump has no Economic plan on TV the other day. How can they still have any support while lying blatantly all the time.”
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