New York Times’ Paul Krugman blasted for touting ‘Biden boom’

New York Times economic columnist Paul Krugman got blasted on social media on Tuesday after he insisted the US economy is enjoying a “Biden boom” — despite a recession and record levels of inflation.

The Nobel Prize-winning professor posted a chart comparing the cumulative number of jobs added during the first two-and-a-half years of President Biden’s term and the four years in which his predecessor, Donald Trump, was in office.

Krugman then doubled down on his insistence that the US is not in the midst of a recession.

“The problem may be that the Biden economy boomed *too much*, feeding inflation, and that it now needs to cool off, which may involve a recession (but hasn’t yet),” he tweeted. “But the basic fact is that so far the Biden economy has added 9 million jobs. So it has been a jobs boom, whatever else you may say.”

Twitter users disputed Krugman’s assertions, pointing out that the number of jobs remains short of the pre-pandemic total.

“Not one single new job has been created since the government imposed business closures,” one shot back. “In Feb 2020 there were 158.7 million Americans employed, as of May 2022 there are 158.2. There are still 500k FEWER people working today than in Feb of 2020.”

Others noted that the pandemic hit during the Trump administration, forcing states to shut down much of their economies.

One Twitter user wrote: “A statement like this is the reason why everyone hates the media. How can you look at yourself in the mirror.”

Derek Hunter, a columnist with Townhall, tweeted: “Jobs weren’t created, they were allowed to return. Talk about ‘the big lie,’ that is the biggest.”

Watching them so brazenly re-define how they have always used “recession,” and then Paul Krugman adding it doesn’t matter if we’re in one or not (it doesn’t matter for him), all to protect the Biden WH, is a new level of audacity no matter how low your opinion of them already is: https://t.co/G7UMBgU7Ix

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 31, 2022

Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, also took Krugman to task for attempting to redefine what a recession is.

“Watching them so brazenly re-define how they have always used ‘recession,’ and then Paul Krugman adding it doesn’t matter if we’re in one or not (it doesn’t matter for him), all to protect the Biden WH, is a new level of audacity no matter how low your opinion of them already is,” Greenwald tweeted.