Carly Fiorina lied as blatantly and aggressively in the third Republican presidential debate as she did in the second, but somehow she didn't make as much of a splash with it. But her lies are worth highlighting, because it's not like she's going to stop telling them. This debate centered on economics, and so did Fiorina's lies. Perhaps the most hilarious among them was one that Mitt Romney used and then had to abandon in 2012, because it was already wrong then. CNN's Alisyn Camerota challenged Fiorina on her claim that "92 percent of the jobs lost during Barack Obama's first term, belonged to women," and Fiorina
did not disappoint:
CAMEROTA: But is there newer data available that makes those numbers obsolete that you shouldn't have used the old numbers last night?
FIORINA: No, absolutely not. Wow, this is the same conversation we had after the last debate. Everybody came out and said I was using wrong data. No, I'm not using wrong data. The liberal media doesn't like the data. Perhaps the liberal media doesn't like the facts. The facts are clear.
She went on from there, but you get the idea. That's the world according to Fiorina. In
the world according to reality,
While the statistic was technically correct for one month in 2012 — about three years into Obama’s first term — it quickly was dropped by Romney’s campaign because newer economic data made it obsolete.
In the debate, Fiorina claimed that this statistic was true for Obama’s first term. But by the time he took the oath of office a second time, his jobs record was a net winner, both for men and women. So this claim is utterly wrong.
Several of Fiorina's other economic claims hold up about as well, although they don't have the added charm of having been debunked so much that they were abandoned by the 2012 Romney campaign.
For instance, Fiorina said that, under Obama, "median-income households have lost nearly $1,300 after inflation." True! But what she failed to mention is that "According to Census Bureau data compiled by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, median household incomes have trended downward since 1999 after adjusting for inflation." Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe 1999 is before Barack Obama became president. It would be better if Obama had turned that trend around, but it's not his creation.
Similarly, talking to CNN's Camerota, Fiorina said that "African-American unemployment remains almost twice as high as white unemployment. Maybe they don't like that stat either. But that stat is true." There's a key word there: remains. Again, we can wish that President Obama had been able to end racial unemployment disparities, but those racial unemployment disparities have been around for
a long time.
This is Fiorina's schtick. She busts out a blizzard of facts, dropping them quickly and assertively, and moving on so that by the time anyone has had the chance to identify just how big her lies and misrepresentations are, she's moved on to the next five things that need to be debunked. But she sure does sound well-informed and confident doing it.