FACT CHECK: Dem Gov Gina Raimondo Tries To Move Goal Posts To Hide Her Lackluster Record On Jobs

As her approval rating sinks to an all-time low while Rhode Island continues to lose jobs, Democrat governor Gina Raimondo’s administration is now moving the goal posts to conceal her lackluster record on the economy. For months, Raimondo has touted that that Rhode Island’s “unemployment rate is below the national average.” But now, after months of job losses and business departures from high-paying manufacturers that have caused unemployment to hike back up, her staff has been forced to change its talking points.

Raimondo is now bragging that the state’s unemployment rate is “in line with the national average,” in an acknowledgement of the state’s recent rise in unemployment. Unfortunately for Raimondo, that’s just not true. While the national unemployment rate has continued to steadily decline for months, Rhode Island’s rate has trended the opposite direction since September as the state has lost hundreds of jobs. In the same time that the national rate has fallen to 4.1 percent, Rhode Island’s rate has risen to 4.4 percent.

This isn’t the first time Raimondo has tried to mislead voters on jobs. In April, the Providence Journal caught her staff using phony jobs numbers to inflate her performance on the economy. But while Raimondo continues to try and distort her lackluster record on jobs growth while Rhode Island’s unemployment rate moves in the opposite direction from the rest of the country, her questionable relationship with the facts shows she can’t be trusted to lead Rhode Island for another four years.