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Someone needed to fill the delusional, pretentious void left by Paul Krugman at The New York  Times to tell Americans they’re too stupid to realize the God-Bless-America awesomeness of the Biden economy. It looks like Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker volunteered.

Baker used a Jan. 5 news item to clap back at President-elect Donald Trump for denigrating Bidenomics and wound up insulting Americans in the process. “President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.” In other words, darn those uneducated plebeians! But it got worse. Baker took his insulting nonsense a step further: “[T]he America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.” Uh, What?! [Emphasis added.]

Baker, of course, adopted a typical Krugman strategy of blurting out cherry-picked statistics devoid of context: “Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best.” He also propagandized how “roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.” 

Oy vey, where do we begin? First, the so-called growth Baker is alluding to is misleading. Much of that economic growth is being bolstered by a government debt bomb. What’s amazing is that Baker even conceded in a buried paragraph that “the national debt has ballooned so much that it now represents a larger share of the economy than it has in generations, other than during the pandemic itself.” Hello! [Emphasis added.]

America is also in the midst of battling a major labor shortage, as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce pointed out in a Dec. 13 report. “Even if every unemployed worker were to fill an open job within their respective industry, there would still be millions of unfilled job positions, highlighting the widespread labor shortage,” the Chamber summarized. Did Baker bother mentioning that? Nope. Another big chink in the armor of Baker’s argument is that inflation had caused stock markets to “appear stronger than they really are and [are] cutting into returns for everyone, including those with retirement accounts,” as Heritage Foundation Senior Research Associate Alexander Frei noted in an Oct. 31 column. Take a guess if Baker bothered to disclose this.

As far as wages go, a September 2024 Bankrate study found, “The past 16 months of ‘real’ wage growth — as economists have called it — haven’t been enough to offset the 25 months where prices were rising disproportionately faster than Americans’ paychecks.” New Statista research found that “Despite the level of wage growth reaching 6.7 percent in the summer of 2022, it has not been enough to curb the impact of even higher inflation rates.” In addition, “Without appropriate wage increases, Americans will continue to see a decline in their purchasing power.” In fact, according to some estimations, the U.S. dollar has lost about a fifth of its value. 

Again, Baker wound up undercutting his own premise by admitting in a buried portion of the ninth paragraph that “Families remain pressed by the cost of living, including housing, health care and college tuition.” Even Bloomberg News reported Nov. 19 that more than half of Americans are struggling to pay bills and save money. Economist Dan Mitchell wrote Dec. 27 that “families, at best, were on a treadmill during the Biden years. There was little o[r] no increase in household income after adjusting for inflation.” Gee, no wonder Americans are convinced the Biden economy sucks, right Baker? Duh! 

But Baker couldn’t resist trotting out some pro-Biden lackeys to help support his talking points like lefty Moody’s Analytics economist Mark Zandi, who absurdly told him that “‘taking the economy in its totality, it rarely performs better than it is now as President Trump takes office.’” Baker didn’t bother correcting this falsehood of course. The Economist measured the economic performance for ”37 mostly rich countries” in 2024 by combining GDP growth, stock market performance, core inflation, unemployment and government deficit. As National Review senior political correspondent Jim Geraghty first pointed out about The Economist’s analysis, the U.S. is ranked 20th overall, “in what can at best be called a very mixed bag — ranking ninth among the 37 countries in GDP, fourth in stock market performance, 23rd in inflation, 29th in change in unemployment rate over the past year, and 31st in estimated deficit growth compared to GDP.” 

Baker could certainly give Karine Jean-Pierre a run for her money as Biden’s de facto Press Secretary. Baker, true to form, just proceeded to accuse Americans of just either being short-sighted by their own circumstances, dismissive of stats, or being dumb Trump sheep:

Indeed, many Americans do not perceive the country to be doing as well as the data suggests, either because they do not see it in their own lives, they do not trust the statistics or they accept the dystopian view promoted by Mr. Trump and amplified by a fragmented, choose-your-own-news media and online ecosphere.

Hey Krugman, come get your boy.