A senior Biden campaign official told “Bill Hemmer Reports” on Thursday that President Trump’s reaction to the better-than-expected June jobs report amounted to “increasing football on the 50-yard line.”
“Let’s not forget why we’re in this hole in the first place,” Biden campaign communications director Kate Bedingfield told host Bill Hemmer. “I mean, this is Donald Trump trying to take credit for the positive numbers of jobs after he spent the past four months tragically handling this virus, which means we are now in the hole we are in.”
TRUMP TOUTS ‘HISTORIC’ JUNE JOB REPORT
Earlier Thursday, Trump touted the report as “historic” and proof that the “economy is rumbling” after being crushed by the coronavirus pandemic. The report saw America’s unemployment level drop to 11.1 percent, as employers added 4.8 million jobs in June. Nearly eight million jobs have been added since early May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
When the coronavirus swept the nation in March, most Americans were forced to curl up in their homes to prevent the spread of the disease. The outbreak sparked a massive economic recession, with more than 40 million people filing unemployment claims for the first time and increasing the unemployment rate to levels not seen since the Great Depression nearly a century ago.
Bedingfield emphasized to Hemmer that the Biden campaign is “encouraging a recovery” and “to suggest otherwise is crazy.” However, he added, “We are not going to get there unless we do the hard work to get there. And that is what Donald Trump is not doing.”
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“From the beginning, he has focused more on his own political fortune,” he added. “He has focused more on ruling out the virus, saying things like ‘it will magically disappear,’ saying, you know, remember in March when he said, ‘Everyone who can get it, everyone [who] want proof, can you get one? That is still not true.
“He has not done the hard work to establish protections to ensure that our economy can reopen strongly, and that is part of what we are beginning to see and that is why we see people feeling a tremendous amount of fear.”
Paul Steinhauser and Allie Raffa of Fox News contributed to this report.
