Fox News anchor John Roberts wondered on Friday whether the White House knew well in advance about the surprisingly good jobs report and, therefore, scheduled a presidential event to tout the numbers.
Roberts’ colleague, meanwhile, had to remind him that the White House always holds an event addressing the latest jobs report, regardless of whether the data is positive or not.
Going into Friday morning, the expectation from Wall Street, economic forecasters, and the Biden administration was that January’s employment numbers would be disappointing and potentially even show losses for the month due to the Omicron surge. In fact, the White House even preemptively warned the public earlier this week that it was possible the report would look bad because COVID-19 cases were at their highest when the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveyed employers last month.
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Just ahead of the release of the report on Friday morning, Fox News was giddily gearing up to blast President Joe Biden in anticipation of disastrous job losses. “What vaccine do you get for job loss?” Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy quipped to his son, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy, at one point.
The BLS reported, however, that the U.S. economy gained a robust 467,000 jobs in the month of January. Furthermore, the bureau revised the previously middling reports from December and November, revealing that there were an additional 709,000 jobs added in those two months.
With Fox hosts spending the rest of the morning scrambling to find a way to cover the glowing report as a negative for the president, Roberts kicked off the afternoon by interviewing the younger Doocy about the jobs numbers and the Biden team’s reaction to it.
At the end of their discussion, after Doocy said the White House feels like their economic approach is working, Roberts postulated that the administration—knowing everyone expected poor numbers—may have pulled a fast one on the media.
“Peter, we should have known something was up when they had a jobs report event on the schedule that was released last night because the White House does get those numbers in advance,” the veteran anchor declared.
“Ahh, quite an elaborate ruse!” Doocy laughed in response.
“Yeah, the White House likely wouldn’t have an event if they knew the numbers were going to be bad,” Roberts said, adding, “You know, read the tea leaves. We missed it!”
Roberts’ co-anchor Sandra Smith, though, quickly pointed out that the White House has generally held an event every time the BLS numbers have come out—even when they’ve initially been disappointing.
“You know, in their defense, they have come the morning after pretty bad jobs reports in recent months and they still comment on or spin it in some way,” she noted.
Speaking of spin, elsewhere on the same program the network aired a graphic featuring a “Help Wanted” sign and a photo of the president alongside the chyron “Biden Boasts With Millions Out of Work.”
