'Just doesn't hold water': Tapper confronts Republican over Trump claims

CNN anchor Jake Tapper pushed back on one Republican lawmaker’s attempt to clear President Donald Trump and Republicans of their stagnant economic numbers that came out this week.

“That just doesn't hold water,” Tapper said, after U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) attempted to lay the nation’s plummeting job numbers on temporary sports events like the World Cup.

The exchange began with Tapper asking Gimenez to answer for the economy delivered to voters by Trump and his congressional Republican majority in weeks preceding a problematic November mid-term.

“But I understand the frustration that the American people have,” said Gimenez, who then tried to blame former president Joe Biden for the economy nearly two years after Biden and his cabinet departed, despite Biden topping Trump’s job numbers. “… I think our message is, ‘look, it's not perfect right now, but if you go back to what we had with Biden and the Democrats, you're going to get out of control spending, which is going to jack up the inflation rate.”

Gimenez then claimed “the dip in the employment numbers” was because of the “end of the World Cup.”

“You had hundreds of thousands of people employed by the World Cup. And, you know, there's no more World Cup. And so we need to see what happens in August. … But I believe that we're on the right track. … It's just going to take a little bit of time for it to come to fruition.”

“I don't know that that World Cup spin is accurate,” Tapper countered. “The World Cup lasted three weeks into July, and we had an economist on earlier who said that that just doesn't hold water. In terms of the Trump economy versus the Biden economy, I mean, … President Trump won quite handily in 2024. Now we're in 2026 and the American people don't think that that is a selling argument.”

“Your constituents, they are worried about their gas prices. And now, they know that the war in Iran is one of the reasons why their gas prices are so high. They voted for Donald Trump because he said he was going to bring prices down, but you know a lot of groceries cost more. Aren't you worried?”

“Yeah, of course I'm worried,” Gimenez admitted. “But again, our job is also to contrast what we're doing to bring the costs down versus what the Democrats are going to do, which is going to jack prices way back up again. … Look, you got to stay the path. You know, we're going to get there. But if you go back to that, it's going to get much, much worse.”

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