Chris Christie, Bob Menendez claims go to Truth-O-Meter

The election is over but claims about President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney continue being checked by the Truth-O-Meter.

In case you missed it, the Truth-O-Meter on Sunday gave Gov. Chris Christie a Pants on Fire for a repeated claim about his endorsement of Romney, while Sen. Bob Menendez received a Half True on Monday for a claim about the president and job creation.

Christie claim

During a Nov. 7 press conference in Harvey Cedars, Christie repeated a claim that he was the first governor in the country to endorse Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, for president. The Truth-O-Meter first ruled on a version of this statement in September and gave Christie a False. The governor received a Pants on Fire because he repeated the false claim.

Menendez claim

The senator, a Democrat, said during an Oct. 27 campaign rally in Monmouth County that Obama’s leadership has led to the creation of 5 million jobs, compared with millions of jobs lost under President George W. Bush. But we determined that the 5 million pertains only to private-sector job growth since February 2010 — a cherry-picked time frame that provides the best possible outlook on job growth.

We also determined that the number of net jobs created is significantly less when we measured job growth under Obama for different timeframes (when the president took office, his first full month in office and the official start of the nation’s economic recovery), and factored in lost public-sector jobs.

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