Fox News host Harris Faulkner was not about to let former Democrat Rep. Pat Murphy spin his way around the truth about what happened to his party under Barack Obama.
Faulkner cut Murphy off during Thursday’s “The Faulkner Focus” after he tried dodging the facts about the massive losses Democrats suffered while Obama was in office.
Earlier in the segment, former George W. Bush official Marc Theissen laid out the brutal numbers.
“If you want a path out of the political wilderness, the last person you should follow is Barack Obama,” Theissen said. “Barack Obama’s presidency is the moment the Democratic Party abandoned Clintonian centralism for left-wing politics. It was a disaster for the Democratic Party. I went back and looked at the members, Harris, during Barack Obama’s eight years, Democrats lost 1,027 elected offices across the country.”
“They started out his presidency with a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a 257-vote majority in the House. They lost 12 Senate seats and 63 House seats, thanks to Obama. At the state level, they lost 939 legislative seats and 12 governorships,” Theissen continued. “And of course, the final verdict of the American people on the Obama presidency, they elected Donald Trump and did it with 8.3 million people who voted for Obama and switched their votes to Donald Trump. So this is not somebody who you want to lead them out of the political wilderness because he led them into it.”
Faulkner then turned to Murphy and gave him a chance to respond.
“He’s going with the facts, but he’s talking electoral politics. Harris, what I want to talk about is Barack Obama is one of the most successful presidents we had,” Murphy started to say, when Faulkner stopped him cold.
“Wait! Wait! Wait! So, he’s talking about the actual politics of winning, and you want to talk about the man’s personality?” Faulkner fired back.
Murphy then tried to pivot, saying he wanted to highlight “how [Obama] brought Bin Laden to justice because he tripled the amount of forces in Afghanistan while ending the war in Iraq,” and mentioned the Affordable Care Act.
In April, Faulkner fact-checked Murphy again during a discussion about President Donald Trump’s newly imposed tariffs, pointing out that he failed to address the surge in inflation and credit card debt under the Biden administration.
Trump unveiled a sweeping plan for reciprocal tariffs during a Rose Garden event Wednesday, citing “horrendous imbalances” in global trade. Reports indicated that countries such as Japan and South Korea were already seeking negotiations.
When Murphy criticized Trump over inflation and rising credit card delinquencies, Faulkner interrupted to highlight the Biden administration’s own track record on those same economic issues.
“We don’t want inflation, right? Inflation has gone down, it was still too high,” Murphy said before Faulkner broke in: “Well, you wanted it for the last four years because you tolerated it.”
“Harris, I’ve been on here, it was 9%, it’s down to 2.6%. It’s ticking up, it’s still too much. The goal is 2%. The reality is this, though: American people have been put through the wringer,” Murphy responded.
“We lost 10 million American jobs because of COVID. We lost one million Americans. Right now, the national average of people’s credit card debt, it’s the highest it’s ever been. Delinquencies on paying that credit card off are too high,” he continued.
“Two things here, two facts there,” Faulkner began. “One, you have different presidents and notice what happened to the inflation. That’s one. The second thing is the highest that we’ve ever seen people in debt actually happened about 12 months ago.
“We know that because the credit reporting bureaus were saying people were asking for, you know, extra counseling to handle their debt. It didn’t just get paid when President Trump became president, but the goal is to try to get them some equality between what they’re earning and what things cost,” she said.