JEFF ZELENY: The president talking about the jobs number, first and foremost, this unemployment rate he is inheriting. This will be the bench-line, beginning marker for his administration. And he has often talked about how he doesn’t believe this number. When he was campaigning, he said, “there are many, many more unemployed Americans.” But now, this is a number that he will accept. And you, of course, saw him accepting that and being happy with that.
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CHRISTINE ROMANS: He called the Labor Department statistics on jobs a “hoax,” he's called them “phony,” he's called them “fake,” a “fraud.” Now he seems to be accepting them. They were good. He seems to be accepting them.
CAROL COSTELLO (HOST): Yeah we should read the quote for people in case they missed that. So you go ahead and do that.
ROMANS: This is what he said. He said a couple of things happened this morning,“227,000 jobs, great spirit in the country right now. So we're very happy about that.” In the past he has seen numbers like that and he said, “Oh, that's fake, that’s fake to make Barack Obama look good.” Now he seems to be accepting it. “I think it's going to continue big league. We're bringing back jobs, we’re bringing down your taxes, we're getting rid of regulations,” et cetera, et cetera. He has promised 25 million new jobs, that would make him the biggest job creator president in history. So he needs these jobs to be good.
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ROMANS: So it seems he's accepting these numbers, at least as a baseline for now. There's no conspiracy in the numbers when they belong to him.
