WATCH: Joe Kernen Grills Biden Economic Official, Then Mixes it Up With His Co-Host in Contentious CNBC Debate

Joe Kernen and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo went at it over the state of the economy under President Joe Biden’s administration.

Raimondo on Thursday joined Squawk Box to discuss the economic outlooks for Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. While trying to explain why she thought another Trump presidency would spell doom for the country’s economy, Kerned pointed to a number of statistics to prove otherwise:

RAIMONDO: Why would I believe that? He says it; he’s doubled down on it; he repeats it. By the way, he was president. We know what that resulted in: massive deficits.

KERNEN: It seems like you kind of forgot that earlier. The tariffs that he did put on were continued by the Biden administration. There was no recession, real wages were actually up, the stock market did well. A lot of very positive things happened — record low unemployment until the pandemic — so it’s just weird to act like it’s a complete wild card what kind of president he would be when you’ve got a blueprint right there of what kind of president he would be. And Kamala Harris has been vice president for four years and we’ve seen exactly what kind of vice president she would be.

RAIMONDO: Right, what have you seen? You’ve seen more manufacturing in this country since World War II.

KERNEN: I’ve seen an open border. I’ve seen a real wages go down. I’ve seen, you know, crime.

RAIMONDO: That’s not true.

KERNEN: What’s not true? Real wages haven’t gone down?

RAIMONDO: I just don’t agree with that.

KERNEN: Real weekly wages have gone down. Average weekly wages are still down from when Biden came into office.

RAIMONDO: When Biden came into office, we saw sky high unemployment, sky high inflation.

KERNEN: From the pandemic. But prior to that, before the pandemic, it was three-point —

Andrew Ross Sorkin then took issue with Kernen seemingly excluding the pandemic numbers:

SORKIN: But you can’t discount, you can’t say, “The economy was great during the Trump administration if you somehow exclude the pandemic,” and then turn around and say —

KERNEN: If you want to do the pandemic, fine; but prior to that, the economic policies resulted in a very good economy.

SORKIN: But then you can’t then say, “Well, the economy was somehow terrible to the Biden administration,” and pretend the pandemic didn’t happen!

KERNEN: Part of the inflation that caused real wages to be down is from the pandemic; but piling on all the stimulus and all the spending is what really exacerbated that situation.

SORKIN: And none of those things were related to the pandemic?

KERNEN: I just don’t think you can say it’s going to immediately be a recession when that didn’t happen the first time.

Watch above via CNBC