During an interview with MSNBC on Friday aired on Friday’s broadcast of “The 11th Hour,” President Joe Biden claimed that “no one’s ever tied” their budget to raising the debt ceiling and responded to charges that former President Donald Trump was willing to play ball on issues while he won’t by stating that Trump hurt the economy and increased debt, while the economy under the Biden presidency is doing well.
Biden said, “[T]he idea someone, for the first time, is saying, unless you pass this ridiculous budget I have — which is the way I would characterize what the Republican MAGA budget is — unless you pass this budget, we’re not going to increase the debt limit and we’re going to go bankrupt, we’re going to — the United States of America is going to renege for the first time in history on its debt. And you just can’t — no one’s ever tied them together before. I’ve said to the Republican leader, here’s the deal: Take the debt limit, pass it like you did three times when Trump was president, and he increased the whole national debt for 200 years by 40%.”
Host Stephanie Ruhle then asked, “Republicans would argue, though, that Donald Trump, at the very least, they would say, played ball. You’re not willing to play ball, they would say.”
Biden responded, “Play ball? He ballooned the debt, he created unemploy[ment]. Look, when I came to office, we had incredibly high unemployment, we were in a situation where we had very little movement on anything going on. And look at the employment rate now. Just today, 250,000 new jobs, highest participation in 75 years of women in the job market, lowest unemployment rate for African Americans. Things are moving.”
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