August 12, 2020: Vice President Pence Gives Magic Math a Try

 

8/12/20: Vice President Mike Pence, took time out from leading the Coronavirus Task Force to comment on the new Democratic ticket.

 

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More magic math, this time from Mike Pence.

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Naturally, he showed up on Sean Hannity’s show, where he knew it would be safe to throw out magic math figures without challenge. His host is a practitioner of magic math himself. So, if V.P. Pence had said Trump had saved 500 million American lives with his leadership during the coronavirus crisis, Hannity wouldn’t have blinked. 

What Pence did say was nearly as absurd. He claimed that in the last three months, Team Trump had created more jobs than Obama and Biden did in eight years. 

Let’s go to the source. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides job numbers every month, both gains and losses:

Blurry, screenshot. Go to the link if you can't read this.

If we start adding jobs created in February 2017, when Pence and Trump took over, we have, 

            1,924,000 jobs added (February-December 2017)

            2,178,000 jobs added (2018)

            2,133,000 jobs added (2019)

               465,000 (January-February 2020)

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            6,700,000 jobs added

         22,160,000 jobs lost (March-April 2020)

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        -15,460,000 net job loss

 

Then we have: 

9,279,000 jobs added (May-July 2020)

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That leaves Team Trump (and, Trump fans, feel free to check my math) with a net loss of: 

           -6,181,000 JOBS.

 

As of this moment, in other words, V.P. Pence and “Drink Disinfectant Donald” have created zero jobs. 

0.                                                        

 

And that’s being generous. 

Mr. Pence must have tried counting on fingers and toes, and gotten lost around the time he ran out of toes.

 

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BUT WAIT, we’re saved! President Trump has added a new face to the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Mainly because he didn’t like listening to the faces he already had, because they kept telling him the pandemic was getting out of hand. 

Now he has Dr. Scott Atlas by his side. Dr. Atlas’ job will be to tell the president what he really wants to hear. Rush Limbaugh correctly noted that Atlas was there “to counter [Dr.] Fauci.” 

Or, as Bill Gates puts it, “The administration has now hired this Stanford guy who has no background at all just because he agrees with their crackpot theories.” 

One of Dr. Atlas’ first efforts is to go on camera with BBC News, and insist the U.S. had done a better job of handling the virus than Europe. And to prove his point he cited statistics that no one else could verify. 

POSTSCRIPT: In world news, with a link to fat cats in the U.S., China, Russia, and everywhere else, the former king of Spain, Juan Carlos, has gone missing, having fled the country. 

The king abdicated in 2014. 

Now prosecutors say he managed to steal from his people and hide his ill-gotten gains, using a “web of offshore foundations and secret bank accounts.” In fact, anytime you hear “offshore” anything, think: Crooks in high places.