Romney, job ‘truthers’ cry foul after positive jobs report

>> we begin with a pleasant october surprise , unexpectedly strong jobs numbers out this morning offering a shot of optimism and encouragement for both american workers and for the president's re-election bid. the september jobs report showing that employers added 114,000 new jobs. the unemployment rate falling to 7.8%. the lowest it's been since january 2009 . adding to the positive news, job gains were revised upward by 40,000 for july and by 46,000 for august. casting the summer jobs picture in a much warmer glow overall and the president took the news to battleground virginia this morning where it was greeted with an enthusiastic cheer.

>> the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since i took office. more americans entered the workforce, more people are getting jobs. today's news certainly is not an excuse to try to talk down the economy to score a few political points. it's a reminder that this country has come too far to turn back now.

>> you heard the president. it's no day to talk down the economy to score political points. but shadowing the president in virginia, mitt romney waited nine minutes deep into his scintillating stump speech before even mentioning the big news of the day, delivering it like a speech at a funeral.

>> there were fewer new jobs created this month than last month, and the unemployment rate , as you know, to this year has come down very, very slowly. of course, even those that have jobs are having tough times.

>> okay. but give mr. romney credit because he actually admits the unemployment rate did come down. unlike prominent conservative jack welch who tweeted this morning, unbelievable jobs numbers. these chicago guys will do anything. can't debate, so change numbers. okay. tuesday he was a ruthless race baiter . yesterday he was a feckless delivery boy. today he's don corleone , and there's more where that came from. congressman west, take it away.

>> you are alleging specifically that the president is engaging in a cover-up of the data. you are saying that the administration is actively manipulating that data, correct?

>> well, absolutely.

>> good news is all this conspiracy may open up even more jobs. demand for the manufacture and sale of tin foil is increasing as we speak. essential material for all those tin hats. here in new york jonathan alter , a columnist for bloomberg view and democratic strategist julian epstein and john harwood , chief washington correspondent and political writer for "the new york times." julian , so, the bureau of labor statistics is now to be lumped in with false memory syndrome , satanic abuse , and the abduction of children byu fos in terms of its accuracy and trustworthy iness?

>> we've talked about the archie bunker wing of the waert. now we have the paranoid paranormal wing of the party. this is the same group of people that don't believe in evolution. this is the same group of people that don't believe in climate change . these are the same people who are complaining about the poll numbers being biased, and now they're complaining about a methodology that is very open and transparent and that has been used for decades in terms of computing the employment numbers. and, you know, this is to democrats this is music to our ears. when you start complaining about the polls and you start complaining about employment number methodology, it's a very, very clear sign that the other side is losing the debate and they have to go to these kind of, you know, bush league tactic that is don't persuade anybody and, you know, this is very, very good news for us. it's a big sign these guys are losing the debate.

>> before i ask you a question, john, i need to explain that the poltergeist has actually taken john harwood from us so he's not here. but the job numbers were accurate when they were above 8%, but the moment they went below, they are fraudulent and part of a conspiracy run by the mafia in chicago .

>> it's one thing for al alen west, a whack job congressman from florida, and other donald trump -type conspiracy theorists on the fringe to be buy into this nonsense but it was really disturbing when jack welch , who was a tremendously effective ceo of general electric for many years, that he would buy into this is really a sign that the pro- romney part of the american establishment is flipping out now and actually saying things that, you know, have no evidence behind them, and if you're going to say pigs can fly, you need irrefutable pictures of the pigs flying, otherwise you shouldn't say it. this is a problem with twitter. people feel like they can say anything even if there's no evidence for what they're saying.

>> allijulian, are we supposed to believe that multiple public servants and statistic that is are kept securely fastened until their day of release have someone been manipulated by the chicago half ya.

>> look, there's statistics that aren't even arguable here. when obama came in as we've discussed, we were losing 800,000, we're now gaining somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs a month. that's a positive swing of 1 million a month. when obama game in we are at negative 9 gdp. now we're at 2, maybe 3. positive swing of 12. the romney thesis is that the economy was getting worse. it was obama 's fault, and romney was mr. fix-it. and in each of those tenets it seemed to me they have gone out the window. i think obama will start asking where is the beef. the numbers are very clear about the economic turnaround since he's been president. he has an economic jobs recovery act now which by everybody's reckoning would create somewhere between 1 million and 2 million jobs. on the other hand, you have romney who has no economic plan whatsoever other than to say i want to cut taxes below the 15% ofg dp that they are right now, and then the other night he says, well, i don't want to actually cut the actual tax rate , i want to cut rates and then i want to increase deductions and give us effectively the same amount of taxes coming into the economy which leaves him with an unutterly incoherent record. with romney you have nothing and i think the message you will start hearing next week is going back to that old mondale commercial, where is the beef, show us the beef, because there ain't none there.

>> john, before we eviscerate mitt romney entirely, he hasn't jumped on the bandwagon, though he did downplay the jobless rate, and he misstated the reason behind it. take a listen to this, john.

>> the reason it's come down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work.

>> in fact, the unemployment rate fell because more people were working. i mean, this man's not capable of telling the truth about anything.

>> well, he's actually correct in some past months but not in today's job.

>> but he was speaking today.

>> and so what he's doing now is he's talking down the economy, strictly for political purposes. and if barack obama can't do something with that in the next debate, then there's really some problem with his debate performance because this is a slow one coming in over the plate. the trouble that the president has in talking about the whole subject is he can't be too optimistic -- of course.

>> -- because in the past what's happened is when he's gotten too far ahead of himself in saying that things are looking rosy, there are still a lot of people out there who are hurting and they don't want to hear that. the president has to kind of walk a fine line. but any rational person should know when there's signs of hope, to run them down and minimize them and tell people that it's not good news isn't helpful for anybody except maybe your political fortunes.

>> incapable of celebrating good news. julian , jonathan, thank you both.