White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders admitted Tuesday evening on Twitter that she gave false information when attempting to tout President Trump’s record on job creation for Black Americans.
Sanders told reporters, Tuesday, during a White House press briefing:
“This president, since he took office, created 700,000 new jobs for African-Americans. After eight years of President Obama in office, he only created 195,000 jobs for African-Americans. President Trump, in his first year and a half, has already tripled what President Obama did in eight years.”
She greatly undercounted the number of jobs created under Obama.
According to the official count from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since the Great Recession, most of the employment gains for Black people took place during the Obama administration.
From January 2009 to January 2017, Obama increased employment for Black Americans by about 3 million jobs.
“Sanders’ error dramatically alters the comparison between the two presidents,” according to PolitiFact.
“Rather than Trump tripling Obama’s increase in African-American employment, it is actually Obama who in eight years quadrupled the increase Trump oversaw in a year and a half. And Obama had to deal with the fall-out from the Great Recession during that period.”
After the backlash from Sanders’ statement, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) said in a tweet: “Apologies for @WhiteHouseCEA’s earlier miscommunication to @PressSec.”
Sanders then re-tweeted the CEA, adding her own message:
Correction from today’s briefing: Jobs numbers for Pres Trump and Pres Obama were correct, but the time frame for Pres Obama wasn’t. I’m sorry for the mistake, but no apologies for the 700,000 jobs for African Americans created under President Trump https://t.co/EXGvbliwlS
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) August 15, 2018
