President Joe Biden went on a winding tangent Friday and appeared to blame the media for polls that show Americans believe the economy is in a “fair” or “poor” state.
“Mr. President, you started your remarks today by saying it was ‘good news today’ with the economic report. Why do you think most people still don’t feel positive or feel good news about the economy?” a reporter asked Biden after the president’s speech on the September jobs report.
“I think the people of 300-plus thousand people who just got jobs feel better about the economy,” Biden said. “And look, I gotta choose my words here. You all are not the happiest people in the world, which you report. And I mean it sincerely. You get more legs when you report something is negative. I don’t mean you’re picking on me, it’s just the nature of things. You turn on the television and there is not a whole lot about ‘boy saves dog because he swims in the lake.’ It’s about ‘somebody pushed the dog in the lake.’”
During the month of September, the U.S. added 336,000 nonfarm payroll jobs as the unemployment rate stayed at 3.8%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.
REPORTER: You started your remarks – by saying it was good news…Why do you think most people still don’t feel positive…about the economy?”
BIDEN: “You all are not the happiest people in the world…You get more legs when you report something’s negative. I don’t mean you’re… pic.twitter.com/rrRCTDDHFd
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 6, 2023
While Biden continues to boast about the economy under his leadership, 61% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, according to July research from LendingClub, a financial services company. Seventy-five percent of U.S. adults think the economy is in a “fair” or “poor” state. (RELATED: White House, Media Elites Think Americans Are Too Stupid To See How Good Biden’s Economy Is)
About 16% of Americans believe the economy is getting better, while 56% of U.S. adults say the economy is getting worse, according to the YouGov Poll.
Remember that good news for the overall economy can be bad news for the media’s economy.
“Negative words in news headlines generate more clicks” https://t.co/vWAomslai2
“Negativity Drives Online News Consumption.” https://t.co/8ZlqMDtbMr https://t.co/y5DxaVnVCD
— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) October 6, 2023
“If you just listen to what’s going on around the world, there’s reason for people to be concerned,” Biden told reporters Friday. “There’s reason for people to be concerned [with] what’s going on with Russia. There’s reason to be concerned with what’s going on with other parts of the world. I think that the American people are smart as hell and know what their interests are.”
“I think they know they are better off financially than they were before,” Biden continued. “That’s a fact. And all that data, all that polling stuff shows they are more positive about the economy than they’ve been, more positive about jobs, et cetera.”