Defending Biden’s Economic Nonsense Is Hard Work

On Friday, President Biden’s Twitter account produced this specimen:

It’s phrased as a question-and-answer, but the answer is not in any way related to the question. Raising the corporate-income tax (presumably the policy on offer) is not a way to bring down inflation.

But there it is, on the president’s Twitter account. Presumably, it reflects a view that the president holds. Since it is utter nonsense, and the entire world saw it, one would think the White House would be prepared to answer questions about it.

One would think.

Today, in the first press briefing since that tweet went up, Peter Doocy of Fox News read the tweet and asked the most straightforward question possible: “How does raising taxes on corporations reduce inflation?”

There’s only one correct answer to this question: “It doesn’t.” But the press secretary is not in the business of giving correct answers. The press secretary’s job is to give politically advantageous answers, which often bear little resemblance to correct answers.

Here’s the answer that press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave to Doocy’s question:

Jean-Pierre was clearly caught off guard by the question. You can tell because she hesitated and asked, “Are you talking about a specific tweet?” immediately after Doocy read, verbatim, a specific tweet.

The stalling didn’t lead to a better answer, though. It seems Jean-Pierre’s mental calculation went as follows: There’s no possible way to defend this entire tweet, so I’ll just defend the half that’s more politically popular, which is taxing the wealthy.

Of course, that doesn’t answer Doocy’s question, so he asked it again.

At this point, Jean-Pierre resorted to simply reading off the piece of paper in front of her, which mentioned something about climate change (totally unrelated). Whatever came next on the sheet was actually about taxes, but she read “change” when she meant “charge,” an honest mistake when you’re glancing at a piece of paper and reading it aloud for the first time as you kick yourself because your one job is to not let Peter Doocy catch you off guard and the rest of the press corps will love and adore you no matter what.

After some rambling about collective bargaining (this was apparently a wide-ranging list of talking points she was reading from) she brings it home by saying that it’s not fair for manufacturing workers or cops to pay more in taxes than wealthy people. (Note that cops are back in the “good” column for Democrats, alongside the sainted manufacturing workers; “defund the police” no more.) So she stuck the landing, back on a reliable Democratic talking point (which isn’t true, but at least is recognizable), even though it had nothing to do with inflation.

Defending this administration’s record is not an easy job, but it’s now Jean-Pierre’s job. (Jen Psaki has to be feeling good — she’s out before the midterms, and MSNBC pays a whole lot more than government work.) The administration could make Jean-Pierre’s job a lot easier by not stringing together economic nonsense and posting it under the president’s name for the entire world to read.