Friday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez accused President Donald Trump of attempting to “spike the football” because the U.S. added 2.5 million jobs in May, and unemployment dropped to 13.3%.
Mitchell asked, “Let’s talk about the jobs report, better than expected, the president is touting it, and he seems to be trying to reboot his campaign as he was in the Rose Garden speaking for 40 minutes nonstop about this jobs report as the greatest ever. What is your approach to the jobs report today? Are we back on a better trajectory?”
Perez said, “The greatest ever, talk about an inaccurate statement. You know, over the last three months, Andrea, we have seen 19.6 million jobs lost over the last three months. To give you a perspective, Andrea, in the worst three-month of the Obama administration, the worst three-month period, we had 3.2 million jobs loss. Every president since FDR has seen net job growth in their presidency until now with Donald Trump.”
Mitchell pressed, “Excuse me, in fairness, there was a pandemic, let me just say in fairness, there was a pandemic, which caused a complete shutdown of the economy. The most jobs ever, but the fact is it’s coming back from a flatline.”
Perez said, “But the reality, Andrea, is it didn’t have to be this way. What we know is that last December, last January, last February, this president was asleep at the switch. When he should have been asking, when he should have been listening to his experts, he instead was negotiating a trade deal with China. He wants to get that trade deal. It was a crappy trade deal he got. So here we are now. It has exacerbated the extent of the job loss.”
He added, “We are in a crisis, a real crisis. This is like— this jobs report, I want people to get their jobs back. This is like saying, we were 42 points behind in the football game. Now we’re 35 points behind, and he wants to spike the football for being 35 points behind. We’re in a crisis, Andrea.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.