He’s the economic adviser to President Joe Biden, so you would think that he must be a pretty smart guy when it comes to numbers.
You can’t prove that by the way, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum shredded him in a recent interview.
Jared Bernstein just could not get it right with MacCallum on Tuesday. He was trying to defend the still really high gas prices that are wearing down the American public.
Desperate to do something shiny to get some positive attention from voters, the Biden administration has been pretending to take a victory lap because the average gas price has dropped almost 80 cents from the all-time high of almost $6 a gallon in the early summertime.
So now, the national average is $4.14, according to AAA. But a year ago, the average price of gas was just $3.17.
Just before MacCallum had Bernstein on the Fox show, she had interviewed a tow truck company owner who had talked about how painful the price of gas and diesel is for her company.
When Bernstein got on, he wanted to set the record straight on some things.
“I do think though that there’s a couple of fact checks I want to do. Someone said that they thought the gas price had gone down a couple cents. That’s just factually incorrect. It’s down 83 cents off of its peak since mid-June,” Bernstein said.
“Jared, is that true for diesel fuel? That’s not true for diesel fuel. How much has diesel fuel come down?” MacCallum asked.
“Diesel fuel has also come down a lot. I don’t have the number in my head,” Bernstein admitted.
MacCallum then quoted her initial guest who quoted the price of diesel at $5.25 now and a month ago the average price was $5.74.
“Well she deals with it every single day, she fills up her tow trucks. I’m going with her on that,” MacCallum said.
“Hold on, Martha. Wait a second. To say that diesel fuel has come down a couple of cents is absolutely incorrect. I will get you the number of cents. It’s not a couple of cents,” Bernstein said.
You can watch the pathetic exchange below:
