Former Vice President Joe Biden addressed the job and unemployment numbers released on Friday afternoon in a livestream from Delaware. In a shocking glimpse of recovery, the economy added 2.5 million jobs in May and the unemployment decreased to 13.3 percent.
While these shocking numbers should instill hope for economic recovery, Biden used them to criticize the Trump administration.
Biden, who has spent much of the last few months in the basement of his Delaware home, claimed that President Trump is hiding in the bunker, and that the president cannot take credit for the positive economic numbers because “only a fraction” of jobs have returned.
Biden: "It's time for [Trump] to step out of his own bunker and take a look around, the consequences of his words and his actions...A president who takes no responsibility for costing millions and millions of Americans their jobs deserves no credit when a fraction of them return" pic.twitter.com/QvYeFfH61b
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 5, 2020
Biden claimed that the president “hung a ‘mission accomplished’” banner after seeing the positive economic numbers, referring to President Trump’s press conference Friday morning.
Indeed, economic recovery is not nearly finished, and President Trump never claimed it to be. But Friday’s job numbers foreshadow an economic rebound and validate the effectiveness of the relief packages passed by Congress, especially the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which has been a lifeline for small businesses. Biden gave no credit to PPP or the CARES Act, even though both pieces of legislation are largely responsible for Friday’s positive economic numbers.
Full economic recovery does not happen overnight. From his eight years in President Obama’s White House, a tenure which brought historic devastation to the American economy, Biden knows this. Despite the former vice president’s criticisms, the American economy is on the upswing, thanks to policies signed by President Trump to give families relief and bolster economic growth.