A Newsmax host was forced to apologize on air after getting a major news story totally wrong.
Wake Up America host Sharla McBride briefly delivered good news to her network’s MAGA viewers on Friday, announcing that the February jobs report said the United States added 92,000 jobs last month.
That news was too good to be true. In reality, the country lost 92,000 jobs in that time frame, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Welcome back, so we are back on Wake Up America with some breaking news,” McBride began, as a chyron at the bottom of the screen indicated the U.S. had added 92,000 jobs.
She continued, ”Last month’s jobs report was just released moments ago, with the economy adding 92,000 jobs in February."
McBride, 41, was quickly corrected by her co-host, Marc Lotter, who grabbed headlines himself last month for failing to recognize a Republican senator who was a guest on the show.
“Actually, we lost 92,000 jobs,” he said to McBride on Friday morning. “That’s alright, we lost 92,000 jobs.”
McBride, who is the daughter of the former executive director of the Georgia Republican Party, Richard McBride, immediately deflected blame and tried to laugh off the gaffe.
“OK,” she responded. “So that was wrong in the script. Sorry about that.”
Things got back on track from there, with the show welcoming an economic expert who bluntly said, “You are going to see a lot of negative headlines on this.”
Tim Doescher, the executive director of Unleash Prosperity, noted that the jobs report was poor not just because of the most recent job losses, but because revisions to previous reports had made them even worse for the state of the economy under 79-year-old President Donald Trump.
The number of jobs added at the end of last year was revised down by 65,000 in December, meaning the U.S. actually lost 17,000 jobs that month. The markets reacted negatively to the news, with the DOW plunging roughly 900 points as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped 1.6 percent each. The unemployment rate ticked up from 4.3 percent in January to 4.4 percent last month.
That bad news comes amid soaring gas prices across the country—a direct result of Trump’s war in Iran.
The head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, Patrick De Haan, said Friday that the average price for a gallon of gas had officially reached $3.35, up 37 cents from just a week ago.
De Haan said prices will “very likely soon become one of the largest weekly increases to average gas prices and the largest since 2022.” He estimated on Thursday that prices could climb as high as $3.55 on average if Trump’s war with Iran, which has no clearly stated goals or end date, continues to rage on.
