Trump insider hit with unexpected fact check from Fox Business host: 'Look at the numbers'

One of President Donald Trump's top economic advisers was met with a fact check during an appearance on Fox Business.

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, appeared Thursday morning on "Varney & Co.," where host Stuart Varney confronted him with bad economic polling amid the war in Iran.

"Another poll on the public and and voters'response to the economy, 47 percent ofvoters say current economicconditions are poor, 73 percent saythe economy is getting worse," Varney said. "Let me express an opinion: I don't think that changes until we get$3 gas. It seems oil prices,gas prices, they're going to be higher for longer.What do you say to that?"

Hassett insisted the economy was stronger than voters perceived.

"The truth is, as you know, we had a solid GDP number come outtoday that had a massive amount ofcapital spending," Hassett said. "The GDP would be twice as bigexcept there were so many imported capitalgoods. One of the things, I got a chart from my staff that said thequality of imports has neverbeen so high because we're bringingstuff that creates jobs andoutput going forward.You saw the initial claims werelowest they've been since the 1960s, government employment is the lowest since World War II, weare doing everything to get ourhouse in order and that's goingto show up, already it's showing up in people's pockets, as you saw in the personal income data."

"In the end people vote their wallets," he added, as Varney chuckled, "and I don't trust surveys."

Varney interrupted with some hard numbers.

"You've got to look at thenumbers," Varney said. "An average of $4.30 a gallon, it was up 7 cents overnight, and diesel's gotten to, what, $5.50, $5.60? That hits voters hard, all kinds of voters react to that – it's a negative. How long are they going to stay at that level? Can you give us any idea when they will comedown?"

Hassett admitted the situation was somewhat outside the Trump administration's control.

"If you look at the situation in Iran, the Iranian economy is completely onthe ropes," he said. "They have hyperinflation,running out of food.A huge amount of feed that goesinto their animals is importedthrough the [Persian] Gulf and havingtrouble getting through, and so there's an enormous amount of pressure on Iran to open up [the Strait of Hormuz], and when they do, President Trump broke OPECbecause the UAE left OPEC, andthey had massive excesscapacity, so as soon as we get the straitopen, oil will flow like you'venever seen before. So I think that futures markets expect pricesto go down a lot, but I think they're underestimating the effectof increased supply once thestrait is open."