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Former South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley was swiftly fact-checked after she got her math painfully wrong while attacking Democratic President Joe Biden, whom she blamed for inflation, which has hammered the global economy.
Haley posted a list of grocery items commonly found at July 4 barbecues that included soda, bread, hotdogs, and other staples. The list, titled “Joe Biden‘s Inconvenience Store" and posted with the hashtag #Bidenflation, included the percentages by which each item has jumped as a result of inflation.
Haley, who has an accounting degree from Clemson University, added up those percentages and claimed that Americans are paying 67 percent more than usual for groceries, which doesn't make mathematical sense.
According to Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service, "a series of six percentage increases can’t be simply added together to yield a total percentage increase." The organization noted that "specific percentage increases for all six items in the graphic were either similar to what independent estimates had found or understated them."
Haley deleted the tweet but not before quick-thinking Twitter users took screenshots.
\u201cShe has an ACCOUNTING degree \ud83d\ude2d\u201d— Santiago Mayer (@Santiago Mayer) 1656949408
Haley was swiftly called out.
\u201cThis embarrassment doesn't even know what an average is versus a sum. Wtf. It's like dealing with a 1st grader.\u201d— ~ Lighted ~ \ud83c\udf0c\ud83e\udd0d\u262f\ufe0f (@~ Lighted ~ \ud83c\udf0c\ud83e\udd0d\u262f\ufe0f) 1657073369
\u201cthe american education system has failed us\u201d— ranne (@ranne) 1657065507
\u201cAnyone with half a brain knows you don\u2019t add up percentages\u2014unless it\u2019s just a deliberate lie\u201d— Catherine Sigmon (@Catherine Sigmon) 1656996692
\u201cThis is the kind of math you can get away with when your party spends years defunding the school system.\u201d— Ben MartinMooney (@Ben MartinMooney) 1657028184
\u201cI'm not the math genius actuary in my family, that'd be @Mystic_Mags - but I am (still) cognitively aware enough to know that Nikki Haley is also not the math genius actuary of her family. Or any family. Or any random group of people. Or pod of dolphins.\u201d— Uncle Jimmy (@Uncle Jimmy) 1657038175
\u201cHere is another GQP Idiot, Niki the math does not work. You can't add percentages Moron.\u201d— Stephen B. Kinder \ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\udf0a (@Stephen B. Kinder \ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\udf0a) 1657057735
\u201cI have met so many morons with college degrees, this is unsurprising. It is also why I never let people education-shame me. I'm an autodidact and I am better read than the vast majority of college grads that I have met.\u201d— HueroJack (@HueroJack) 1657060430
\u201cShe has an accounting degree, people\u2026 https://t.co/iWHTDVku11\u201d— T.J. Mannix (@T.J. Mannix) 1657061869
\u201cShe knew it was stupid because she took it down but not before it got screen grabbed.\nThe Internet never forgets nor does it forgive.\u201d— Joseph Ducote \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6 \ud83c\udf3b\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08\u262e\ufe0f\ud83d\udd96\ud83c\udf0a\u269c\ufe0f (@Joseph Ducote \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6 \ud83c\udf3b\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08\u262e\ufe0f\ud83d\udd96\ud83c\udf0a\u269c\ufe0f) 1657066929
Americans are currently feeling the impacts of inflation at the gas pump and at the grocery store. With inflation running high, the Federal Reserve has announced and already implemented plans to raise interest rates in an effort to "pump the brakes" on the economy.
While many Americans believe the government isn't doing enough to reduce inflation and address supply chain disruptions, the President, no matter who they are, does not have the power to curb inflation. Nor does the White House control demographic or technological changes that can affect an economy's direction.
Though presidential reputations tend to, as The New York Times once so aptly observed, "rise or fall with gross domestic product," a president's economic record is mostly up to chance, "highly dependent on the dumb luck of where the nation is in the economic cycle."