Fox News Sunday: Buttigieg Grilled On False Jobs Claim

Chris Wallace grilled both allies and critics of President Biden on “Fox News Sunday,” fact-checking Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott about claims they’ve made about job growth and the migrant crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Chris Wallace

In speeches this past week, Buttigieg said Biden’s proposed American Jobs Plan would add 19 million jobs to an economy recovering from the pandemic. But Wallace pointed out that Buttigieg was referencing a Moody’s Analytics report that projected an addition of 16.3 million jobs with an increase of 2.7 million jobs if Biden’s plan was implemented to get the 19 million total. When pressed by Wallace, Buttigieg conceded that he overstated the impact.

“So it doesn’t, as you said last Sunday, create 19 million jobs,” Wallace said. “Why mislead folks?”

“Well, you’re right, I should have been more precise,” Buttigieg admitted, though he still defended the American Jobs Plan as one that should be approved by Congress. “The difference in jobs that that particular analysis suggests is 2.7 million more. That is a great place to be, why wouldn’t we want America to create 2.7 million more jobs?”

On the other side of the aisle, Wallace confronted Abbott over his criticism of Biden’s handling of the increase of migrants arriving at the border, as the administration is racing to build new facilities to shelter migrants — many of which are unaccompanied children — that have been left in overcrowded camps. Abbott, along with many other Republicans like fellow Texan Ted Cruz, have slammed Biden on this issue since he took office, warning of sexual abuse and other human rights violations that have occurred in the camps.

But Wallace noted in the interview that there were “thousands of complaints of sexual abuse at migrant shelters during the Trump years” and that he and his team “couldn’t find one instance of you complaining and calling that out when President Trump was president.”

Chris Wallace grills Buttigieg on false jobs claim: 'Why mislead people?' https://t.co/xt7c0kYaBC #FoxNews

— Tom Benson (@Tombenson1) April 11, 2021

Abbott brushed off the question, insisting that there were “multiple differences between what happened in the Trump administration” and the Biden administration. He claimed that Trump officials kept better contact with his office about the situation at the border and that abuse allegations were “filed with federal agencies.”