Trump mocked for false claims about jobs for migrants

Former President Donald Trump was mocked online for comments he made during a meandering news conference claiming that “significantly more” than 100 percent of job creation was attributed to migrants, a mathematical impossibility.

Trump spoke from his Bedminster, New Jersey, residence on Thursday afternoon — a follow-up to last week’s similar event at Mar-a-Lago, which prompted rigorous fact-checking that revealed triple-digit amounts of lies, misrepresentations and distortions.

vice-president Kamala Harris The Trump campaign mocked him before the press conference, and social media users joined in as Trump’s remarks continued.

One comment that particularly attracted attention was his comment attacking the president. Joe Biden — and Harris as a member of the administration — on the economy, trying to downplay the positive news on job creation.

“Virtually 100 percent of the net job creation over the last year was by immigrants,” Trump said. “You know that? Most of the job creation was by immigrants. In fact, I’ve heard that much more than… uh, beyond, actually beyond 100 percent, it’s a much higher number than that, but the government hasn’t caught up yet, but virtually right now, as they’ve done this, virtually 100 percent of the net job creation over the last year was by immigrants.”

He continued with a rant about Social Security, saying it would “explode and fail,” “it would be an explosion like you’ve never seen before” if Harris were elected.

Apart from the fact that it is objectively not true that “practically 100%” of jobs went to migrants, it is not mathematically possible that more than 100% of the total number of jobs created to be allocated to a category of people. Jobs may increase at a rate of more than 100% — anything that doubles in number, for example, increases by 200% — but the number of new jobs is a finite number and more than what actually exists can be taken by migrants, Americans or anyone else.

(Similarly, this is why motivational posters and sports coaches urging you to “give 110%!” are full of bullshit and bad at math.)

People on the platform formerly known as Twitter seemed to have a better grasp of basic math than the 45th president, and they engaged in the expected mockery. Below are some examples.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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