Soledad O'Brien Tries (And Fails) to Debunk Romney's Women Job Loss Claim
CNN's Soledad O'Brien once again tried to fact-check numbers she took issue with, and once more she failed to refute them. On Monday's Starting Point she took aim at Mitt Romney's claim that women have accounted for 92 percent of the job losses under President Obama.
"That would be a shocking number if it were true, which it really isn't exactly overall," O'Brien began. Yet even ABC's George Stephanopoulos admitted the report was "accurate." [Video below the break. Audio here.]
O'Brien claimed that since the numbers were counted beginning with January 2009, they included a three-week hemorrhage of jobs before Obama's January 20th inauguration, and thus he was held accountable for jobs lost during Bush's administration.
However, even if the numbers accounted for this and began in February 2009, women still lost 484,000 jobs in Obama's term, compared with a net gain of 468,000 jobs for men. Thus under President Obama, beginning a few days into his presidency, women lost jobs overall while men gained nearly as many jobs. So while Soledad is trying to refute the "war on women" Obama is being blamed for, she isn't doing a very good job.
In addition, she stated that men lost more jobs in the recession than women and most of their losses occurred before 2009, and thus the numbers should have begun when the recession commenced in December of 2007. However, the Romney campaign was specifically counting job losses for Obama's term – which is not uncommon for judging a presidency – and Soledad could not refute it as false even though she tried.
O'Brien is no stranger to defending Obama. She made headlines for a spat with Breitbart editor Joel Pollak over Obama's connections with radical professor Derrick Bell, tried to deflect blame away from Obama toward President Bush as the "food stamp president," and challenged "The Obamas" author Jodi Kantor over her book's claims – but was refuted by her own network's reports.
A transcript of the segment, which aired on April 16 on Starting Point at 7:44 a.m. EDT, is as follows:
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody. A new front is opening up in the war on women, if in fact there is one. Mitt Romney has been making this claim, listen.
(Video Clip)
MITT ROMNEY, Republican presidential candidate: Of the 800,000 plus jobs that have been lost during the Obama administration, do you know what percentage of them have been lost by women? 92 percent! 92 percent of the jobs lost in the President's term have been lost by women.
(End Video Clip)
O'BRIEN: Wow, 92 percent. That would be a shocking number if it were true, which it really isn't exactly overall, 740,000 men and women lost jobs during January of 2009 and March of this year. Women accounted for 683,000 of those jobs. That's how they get to that 92.3 figure, but the math includes hundreds of thousands of jobs that were lost in the three weeks before President Obama took office, which tilts the picture quite a little bit.
Also overall men lost more jobs in the recession than women did. Most of those losses happened before President Obama took office. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was battling back on Governor Romney's numbers. Listen.
(Video Clip)
TIMOTHY GEITHNER, Secretary of the Treasury: The early job losses were felt mostly by men, because they happened in construction and manufacturing across the economy. And as the crisis intensified over the course of '08 and signal the government started to feel the pressure. They had to cut back on teachers. A lot of women are teachers. So you saw the later effects as the crisis spread to women, too.
(Video Clip)
O'BRIEN: So, not exactly a shocker because I think that the overriding picture is what will women do in this election and that's why we've seen this war on women if you will.
(...)
WILL CAIN, CNN contributor: I want to say this. That statistic, Soledad, is true. Of the –
O'BRIEN: Depending how you the crunch the numbers.
CAIN: Hold on. That statement is true. Now you said a couple hundred thousand the first three weeks of January of 2009. No, it's only a couple tens of thousands and it does change the numbers a little bit, but 92 percent of job losses since Obama took place are women. That's a true statement –
O'BRIEN: Because the bulk of them – because the bulk of them –
CAIN: Let me finish.
O'BRIEN: No, I'm going to stop you there and then you can finish, the bulk of them were lost when George Bush was president, right? So if you – they called it a man-cession.
JOHN FUGELSANG, political comedian: It was the 2009 George Bush budget.
CAIN: Just so I can finish my thought.
O'BRIEN: Okay, go ahead.
CAIN: It is a true statement, but largely useless statement. So what it has done has divided numbers at an arbitrary starting point.
O'BRIEN: Yeah, so it makes it not true.
CAIN: But you know what? I'm going to be –
O'BRIEN: Arbitrary makes math not true.
CAIN: Abby's right. It's turned into a game. It is tit for tat. You create a false war on women. I'll give you a statistic that's largely useless, but true, and we'll have this little fake game. If we just don't indulge in these fake games, it'll be fine.
O'BRIEN: I know but – that seems like the political strategy is these games, right?
(...)
FUGELSANG: Well, again, even Chris Wallace said that the numbers were bunk. And this is the job losses we were having under George W. Bush. I know we hate to say the "B" word, Will, but we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. And these job losses are based on Bush's 2009 budget before the all-hated stimulus went into effect.
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Comments
Her salary should be
Submitted by Kenny Bunkport on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 7:39pm.
Her salary should be considered a political contribution to Obama's re-election.
Soledad? You mean the woman
Submitted by motherbelt on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 8:01pm.
Soledad? You mean the woman who's named after a prison?? (Rush quip; can't remember who said it).
You can bet your bippy (dating myself) if those jobs since 2007 were jobs GAINED, she'd be counting them!
Actually, you're not dating
Submitted by bretzysdude on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 9:14pm.
Actually, you're not dating yourself. I watched Laugh-In reruns on Nick at Nite when I was a teenager, and I tried to use that catchphrase in an argument with my mom. She practically started laughing at me.
Yes, but I was watching them
Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 7:13am.
Yes, but I was watching them LIVE, when *I* was a teenager! LOL
Here come da judge!
Submitted by HockeyKid on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 7:27am.
Thanks for the memories...
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
An airport was also named in her honor.
Submitted by SickofLibs on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 8:21am.
They still haven't come up a name for the road that leads to it, though.
I wish Soledad would be added
Submitted by Newsbusterbrown on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 8:12pm.
I wish Soledad would be added to the number of jobs lost.
“There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.” - Ronald Reagan (1964 Republican Convention)
Amen, Brother!
Submitted by IrateNate on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 9:24pm.
one more couldn't hurt, and I can't think of a more deserving person.
Considering her ratings are lower than CurrentTV,
Submitted by drsamherman on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 9:32pm.
she will probably be "reassigned" to something more suited to her talents, like covering dog shows or replacing the ShamWow guy.
Or back to MTV where she was
Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 7:17am.
Or back to MTV where she was a "better fit."
"Arbitrary makes math not true." -- Soledad O'Brien
Submitted by Galvanic on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 8:36pm.
The math is true. There's nothing arbitrary about the starting point. It was January 2009.
We could start at December 2008, since that was the first month after Obama's election. That wouldn't be arbitrary either.
Think that's a stretch? Well, Obama was still blaming Bush for jobs lost in 2009 and 2010 to the point where even DNC Chair Wasserman-Schultz had to declare in 2011 that "it was now their economy" and stop blamng Bush (though I think sthe still does).
Since Bush-43 didn't personally fire people, we don't know how much of the lay-offs were attributed to the outgoing Bush-43 or the incoming Obama.
Soledad O'Brien
Submitted by Constantine2112 on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 10:28pm.
She has a wonderful comedy hour, now she is even having guest comedians on boost her ratings!
Again
Submitted by bmac32 on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 11:11pm.
If the numbers don't fit Democrats will twist, turn and squeeze things and the still don't fit.
Obama is a complete failure and everything is coming apart at the seams. Gas prices, where are they, yet ABC proudly announces "they're DOWN to $3.92, oh goody the gas prices have reached their peak and good times are ahead, oh really, for who?
It may be me
Submitted by well99 on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 12:29am.
Didn't Dems take over both houses in Jan 2007?Isn't congress the ones who do the nuts and bolts of the budget.
It's not just you.
Submitted by rockyracoon on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 1:19am.
It's not just you.
Facts are like kryptonite to the liberal.
And these job losses are based on Bush's 2009 budget
Submitted by davod on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 2:10am.
"And these job losses are based on Bush's 2009 budget before the all-hated stimulus went into effect."
I thought Pelosi was refusing to vote on Bush's budgets. The Democrats were funding government with continuing resolutions.
While we are on the subject, didn't the greatest biggest badest depression of all time start only after the Democrats took charge of Congress in 2007?
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2012/04/16/soledad-obrien-tries-...
It would seem that "Soledad"
Submitted by HockeyKid on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 7:30am.
It would seem that "Soledad" refers to the loneliness of that single brain cell...
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
Knock down straw men much?
Submitted by wahappened on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 7:33am.
Well, at least these nitwits are finally admitting job loses.
Neenerneenerneener...most of the job loses were by men!
Ivy League???
Submitted by Bighead227 on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 8:44am.
How can the Ivy League keep producing these idiots? Because the ideology is what the professors base their grades. The further left, the lower the standard. So you get this. Shame.
Dear Sol-e-dope O'Blowhard, Why Must You
Submitted by Motormouth KOS on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 9:04am.
Ever open your mouth? All that ever comes out is a stream of bullshit.
You were so very happy to play the phony story that "The Republicans were 'waging war' on women..."
But your libutarded narrative doesn't fit the data, you fat sow.
What are you credential anyway?
What exactly makes you a journalist?
Was it the hummers you gave to Ted Turner?
The Obamination... A crisis leading to a catastrophe..(please donate to MRC)
And that all happened under Obama.
Submitted by CobraMan on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 1:48pm.
"They had to cut back on teachers. A lot of women are teachers. So you saw the later effects as the crisis spread to women, too."
And that all happened under Obama, in spite of having increased government spending to, you know, SAVE THOSE JOBS! THAT"S the part you want to hide: the the losses continued even after spending hundreds of billions of dollars to "prevent" them from happening! Obama went in from of Congress and BEGGED them for 800 billion dollars to SAVE THOSE JOBS! Money that was given to him. Well, how did that work out for him?
By the way, how many teachers actually lost their jobs? You would think that, after making this claim again and again, someone in the Obama administration would produce the "facts" that support that intention. But, alas, they merely make unsubstantiated assertion that, somehow, the 98 percent of women who lost their jobs were all teachers while hypocritically claiming that Romney's statement is "deceptive."
Liberals: it's time to put up or shut up. How many women who lost their jobs since Obama took office were teachers? I'm willing to bet that the majority of women laid off over the last 3 years were NOT teachers! I'm willing to be that the majority of them worked in retail!
Both the Obama administration and the liberal media are playing us as fools! They don't want to admit that the majority of job losses under the Obama administration occurred in the retail sector after the manufacturing/construction losses occurred. For that how massive layoffs due to a shrinking economy progresses. First we lose manufacturing and construction jobs, mostly a male employment sector. Then we lose retail jobs, mostly a female employment sector. The, and ONLY then, do we lose government jobs, and this is because, after both the manufacturing/construction and retail sectors fail, there's no money left to fund government. But it always follows the same progression: First manufacturing/construction, then retail, and then civil service.
Be honest with us, liberals, the retail sector failed AFTER Obama took office. We can argue whether it's his fault or not, but you can't argue that it didn't happen! We didn't just skip over the retail sector and go straight to laying off civil servants like teachers.
Tell the truth, liberals! Obama was supposed to save the retail sector by "shoring up" the manufacturing/construction sector (you know, those "shovel ready" jobs), remember?" That was something he failed to do. He failed because, unlike he said he was going to do, most of the "stimulus" money when into the civil service sector, where it wasn't needed and not the manufacturing/construction sector, where it was desperately needed.
Just where did the majority of that "stimulus " money go, you may ask? It went to the one that was the least threatened sector, for no apparent reason other than this was the sector that the Obama administration was the most worried about. Because of this, because of Obama's focus being primarily on the civil service sector, the retail sector failed, with the result that Obama was forced to "offer" people yet another "stimulus" in the form the federal payroll tax "holiday." A scheme that came far to late, and had too little effect, to save the retail sector. The retail sector failed, leading to massive layoffs within that sector, which caused most of the women in question to lose their jobs. The civil sector layoffs didn't begin until almost a year AFTER the retail sector failed in 2010, a year after Obama took office.
If he HAD done what he said he was going to do, shore up the manufacturing/construction sector, the retail sector would have been ok. But, no, he decided to shore up the civil sector, which didn't need shoring up, and, as expected, manufacturing/construction didn't increase employment which caused the retail sector to fail and a lot of people lost their jobs. Mostly women.
What amazes me the most about all of this is that, despite seeing it happen before their very eyes, despite discussing how badly the retail sector was doing in 2010, despite claiming that "unemployment insurance extensions" will increase sales and save the retail sector, a plan that didn't work, obviously, as it still targeted the wrong sector, all the liberals are STILL focused mainly upon the civil service sector in both their arguments and their spending priories! Will they EVER learn?
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