Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday tried to shrug off turmoil in the American economy by placing the blame for any troubles on former President Joe Biden.
During an appearance on Maria Bartiromo's show on Fox Business, Bartiromo grilled Bessent about the CEO of a major company who told her recently that they believed the United States had already entered an economic recession.
Instead of directly addressing the question, Bessent tried to shift blame away to the former president.
"What the CEO may have alluded to is that the manufacturing sector under the previous administration was in a recession," he said.
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This remark quickly drew the attention of Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics at Yale's The Budget Lab.
"Not sure what Bessent means by 'manufacturing recession' here," he wrote on X. "Real manufacturing GDP (value-added) grew 1.3% over the 4Q ending 2024, and 2% annualized over the 8Q, neither of which are recessionary. The manufacturing unemployment rate was 3.1% in March, very low."
Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, took a far less measured approach to objecting to Bessent's statement and simply said, "Transparently lying won't calm markets, businesses, or consumers."
Non-economists also piled on Bessent's attempts to blame Biden.
"Lying in such a cartoonishly obvious way comes across as extremely stupid hard to believe he's this bad at public advocacy for the administration he serves," observed journalist John Harwood.
"Scott Bessent essentially resorting to 'I know you are but what am I?'" wrote progressive commentator Matthew Sheffield. "This guy is a total clown."
Writing on BlueSky, the Daily Kos's Oliver Willis posted a simple chart showing a boom in manufacturing construction that occurred during Biden's presidency and said sarcatically, "Look at how hard manufacturing was hit under socialist Sleepy Joe."