CNN admits Kamala lied about Trump's record on manufacturing jobs in US

CNN has admitted that Kamala Harris lied about Donald Trump's record on manufacturing jobs during her interview on MSNBC on Wednesday. This comes after the vice president took the opportunity to sit down with Stephanie Ruhle, who defended Harris last week on Maher's show for not talking to the press often enough.

The outlet published a fact-check on Harris, who claimed that Trump left the country "with the worst economy since the Great Depression" and that he lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs "before the pandemic."

CNN reported, in contrast to Harris' false assertion, that from the beginning of his presidency through the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020, the economy had added 414,000 new manufacturing jobs under his tenure. Manufacturing, like other employment in general, dropped like a rock when the pandemic hit in the late winter of 2020. By April 2020, the economy had lost around 1.3 million jobs.

Afterwards, the economy started adding manufacturing jobs again after the pandemic caused so many to be lost. At the end of his presidency, the jobs gained back after April did not make up for the pandemic losses, and 178,00 manufacturing jobs in total were lost by the end of his four years in office.

When the outlet reached out for comment, an aide pointed to a comment that Harris made in a speech, where she said, "Across our economy, all told, almost 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during his presidency – starting before the pandemic hit."

However, Harris' own campaign account, KamalaHQ, did not use the nuance of the comment, posting a clip of Harris with the caption reading, "Almost 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost under Trump before the pandemic. That makes Donald Trump one of the biggest losers ever on manufacturing."

Harris perhaps made the comments about manufacturing in an appeal to gain more male, blue collar workers in the Rust Belt swing states, a group with which she appears to be struggling, along with men in general.