Trump adviser: PBS New Hour edited interview to make me look as awful as possible

In an interview on FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Mornings with Maria (weekdays 6a-9a/ET), White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett told anchor Maria Bartiromo that his recent PBS NewsHour interview was so heavily edited that it created a completely false narrative about him.

“[PBS] NewsHour people cut it to make me look as awful as possible,” Hassett told Bartiromo. “Made it look like I don’t care about government works not getting their paychecks.”

Hassett’s entire staff is either furloughed or working without pay and at least one staffer is driving for Uber to make ends meet.

“There are people that are having trouble making their rent payments, people are having trouble paying for their groceries,” Hassett said. “You know one of my staffers is driving an Uber so of course there’s a lot of pain and the [PBS] NewsHour people cut it to make me look as awful as possible.”

“You know it’s one of the things that I think you expect in the media these days but I don’t think we would’ve expected a place like the [PBS] NewsHour a decade ago,” he added.

Hassett also discussed the impact of the shutdown on the U.S. economy.

“On the economics side, what’s happening is basically GDP is lower because the government shutdown because we don’t get the output from those government works and then it goes back up when they eventually come back to work,” Hassett said. “And so if we say, expect that the first quarter might be about a half percent lower if we miss the month, then we would expect to get the half percent back in the second quarter.”

But, according to Hassett, there is no indication that the economic effects will be long-lasting and they don’t see a recession happening in the second quarter.

“You know we’re looking at 3 percent growth this year as well because of all the momentum,” he said. “You know last year everybody said our 3 percent forecast was crazy.  It looks like we’re going to be right within a tenth or two and I think that the model that gave us 3 percent last year is saying we’re going to get 3 percent next year too and so we’re sticking with our forecast.”

Watch the full interview: