Carly Fiorina Says She Was Wrong on '92%' Claim
She had said 92% of jobs lost during Obama's first term belong to women.
— -- Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina acknowledged that she was incorrect during last week’s primary debate when she claimed “92 percent of the jobs lost during [President] Barack Obama’s first term belonged to women.”
After the debate, fact checkers pointed out Fiorina had recycled the statistic from former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who first made the claim in the 2012 election. It rated “Mostly False” by Politifact four years ago.
"I misspoke on that particular fact," Fiorina said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Until now, Fiorina has defended her use of the "92 percent" figure as accurate.
“The fact-checkers are correct," she said. “The 92 percent -- it turns out -- was the first three and a half years of [President] Barack Obama’s term and in the final six months of his term things improved,” she said Sunday.
Fiorina then criticized the “liberal media” for picking apart the statistic rather than her broader argument, which was that liberal polices are bad for women economically.
“It is factually true that the number of women living in extreme poverty is at the highest rate in recorded history,” she said. “It is factually true that 16.1 percent of women live below the poverty line, the highest level in 20 years. It is factually true that 3 million women have fallen into poverty.”
Fiorina, whose polls numbers benefitted from strong performances in the first two primary debates, said she was pleased with her performance in Wednesday night’s debate on CNBC.
Fiorina said her campaign would not be represented at a meeting of Republican campaigns convening in Washington, D.C., Sunday night to discuss a potential overhaul of the primary debate system following the most recent debate.
On Friday, the Republican National Committee suspended NBC’s next primary debate next February after RNC Chairman Reince Priebus accused CNBC of conducting Wednesday’s debate in “bad faith.”