Senator JD Vance (R-OH) and Governor Tim Walz will soon meet for a debate.
Unfortunately, the moderator for the debate, CBS anchor Margaret Brennan, has been known to push Democrat talking points rather than the actual truth.
Talking Points…
- Brennan says Trump wrong on economy and inflation
- The facts on the economy and inflation
- Analysis
How can we expect Brennan to moderate a debate between these two men honestly when she does not even have her facts straight? To that point, Trump recently attacked Harris on her new economic plan, saying that Harris went "full communist." Trump added that Harris' plan would create "catastrophic inflation."
Brennan then responded to Trump's claims, asking why she was going to prove him wrong. She stated:
"Republicans, as you know, are accusing Harris of advocating for price controls like in communist countries where the government sets a price rather than the marketplace. You said it is not price control. Can you explain how you define what an excessive price is if you don't have a benchmark?"
Her guest, Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, tried to explain how Trump was wrong on this, stating:
"Well, first, these are types of statutes that exist in state law. The Texas Attorney General has prosecuted price gouging violations, and I don't think anyone is going to claim that he is into price fixing and neither is the vice president. This has to be evidence-based.
"It is just making sure that coming out of the pandemic, or in difficult times, that people aren't increasing the price of food just to make a bigger profit. All of it is just making sure that capitalism stays within the guardrails, and it is not new. We've been doing this in the States for a long time."'
The comparison to what Texas did during the pandemic is not a realistic choice in terms of talking about price fixing. Harris is looking to set the market, while Texas was looking to stop temporary price hikes to take advantage of consumers during a crisis, so his entire line of reasoning is irrelevant, at least in my eyes.
To help push the Harris campaign and her economic agenda, which is just more of what Biden pushed, the media is trying to convince everyone that Biden's plan is working better than Trump's plan, but that is because they are using pandemic data, which needs to be removed from the equation. That was a catastrophic event that is not likely to be repeated again for decades, so we have to look at Trump's numbers prior to the impact of the pandemic to see whose plan has worked better.
Since Biden has taken office, prices have risen 19.3%, compared to only 5% during the Trump term up to the pandemic. In terms of jobs, everyone continues to say that Trump lost jobs during his presidency to the tune of 12.6 million, but that is not the truth. These jobs were lost due to the forced shutdown, yet Biden claims his administration "created" more than 15.6 million when nearly 13 million jobs came back from the pandemic. Through the pandemic, Trump had added about seven million jobs, and estimates to his net number were about negative three million, all due to the pandemic lockdowns.
Stock prices have been soaring, up roughly 42% since Biden took office, compared to 33.6% under Trump. However, stocks were flying at a higher rate through Trump's third year in office than Biden's term before the economy was shut down.
In terms of overall economic growth, if you look at both presidencies without the pandemic, Trump's and Biden's economies were growing at about the same pace, with Biden having a bit of an advantage coming out of the pandemic. The difference is that even with similar growth numbers, inflation outpaced the gains over the last three years, so the economy was better under Trump until the pandemic hit.
The bottom line regarding the vice presidential debate is that Vance will likely have two opponents, as I highly doubt Brennan can be unbiased. She worries more about proving Trump wrong than fact-checking anything Democrats say, so I have a feeling when Vance goes to attack Walz, especially concerning his military record, Brennan will shut him down. State-run media.
