President Joe Biden remembers that some headlines from January 2021 didn’t have to do with the Capitol attack and insurrection, even if the insurrection may have been tacitly driven by the information they conveyed. Sample headline? Trump Leaving Office With 3M Less Jobs Than When He Entered, Worst Record Since Depression.
Today after being shown a video of Donald Trump hoping aloud that the American economy craters in 2024, Biden responded by openly mocking Trump with a variation on the headline above.
Trump had said he wanted the economy to crash soon so he wouldn’t have to “be Herbert Hoover.”
Biden’s response? “He has to understand, he’s already Herbert Hoover,” Biden says, “He’s the only other president that lost jobs during his term.”
With the dig, Biden gives a pretty good idea of why Hoover may have been on Trump’s mind.
Biden mocked Trump not just for his jobs record, which was clearly affected by a global pandemic that Biden doesn’t mention, but for appearing to hope against future American prosperity — because if the economy crashes, real everyday Americans will pay the dearest price.
(Note: Trump contends he is merely talking about the timing, not the event itself, hoping that what he views as inevitable — a crash — happens sooner rather than later.)
They showed me the clip of Trump saying he wanted the economy to crash so he could gain politically. Says he doesn’t want to be Hoover.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 11, 2024
Here's the thing: He already is. He’s the first president since Hoover to lose jobs while in office. Some record. pic.twitter.com/eP7RrVtgMQ
Those 2021 headlines Biden remembers? Here’s another one: Trump will have the worst jobs record in modern U.S. history. It’s not just the pandemic.
By contrast, a statement from the White House on December 8, 2023 reported: “The economy created 199,000 jobs in November, for a total of over 14 million jobs since I took office. That’s more than 14 million additional Americans who know the dignity and peace of mind that comes with a paycheck. The unemployment rate has remained below 4% for 22 months in a row.”
[NOTE: Hoover, a business titan before he was a politician, presided as POTUS over the first part of the Great Depression and is today perhaps best known for the so-called Hoovervilles — encampments of the unhoused poor — that sprung up around the U.S. during the country’s darkest economic time.]
