Fox's Brian Kilmeade And The “8 Million Jobs” Rounding Error

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade falsely claimed that the economy has lost 8 million jobs under President Obama's stewardship, a staggeringly false comment devoid of any relationship to reality.

Co-hosting The Five, Kilmeade weighed in on an Associated Press report detailing the sluggish pace of the economic recovery. While economists have said that a slow recovery is expected coming out of a credit crisis, Kilmeade was quick to blame Obama.

Things quickly got derailed when Kilmeade tried his hand at math, declaring, “We've lost 8.8 [million jobs] during his tenure.”

When co-host Bob Beckel challenged Kilmeade's stunningly false statement, Kilmeade protested: “That's a fact. You can't pick and choose what facts you want.”

But it's Kilmeade who is inventing his own facts and rewriting economic history. 

As the AP report made clear, a total of 8.8 million jobs were lost during the recession and through the early months of the recovery. That recession began in 2007 and concluded in 2009. Obama's tenure began in 2009.