President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are clashing over the record unemployment report in the United States.
Shortly after the U.S. Department of Labor unveiled last week’s statistics — more than 6.6 million unemployment claims — on Thursday, Biden’s 2020 campaign released a statement criticizing the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus and its economic impacts.
The Democratic frontrunner is also calling on “extraordinary steps” to be taken to offset the “unimaginable financial pain” many Americans will face over the course of the next several weeks.
Biden is challenging Trump to refrain from “blame games” and “finger-points” and, instead, take necessary expedited steps to offer direct help to Americans amid this crisis.
“The economic devastation that families all across this country are experiencing by no fault of their own means. We have to take extraordinary steps to protect them. We need to get unemployment checks to the workers filing claims, so they are made financially whole. No blame games or finger-points — the President has to take responsibility for helping the states make that happen.”
Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for Trump’s campaign, released a response firing back at Biden.
Trump’s campaign insists the president is doing an effective job combating the coronavirus and the economic crisis while Biden is “ineffectively sniping from the sidelines.”
The statement went on to criticize Biden’s record of economic recovery, deeming it the most “sluggish economic recovery this country has seen since World War II.”
“Americans are facing a public health emergency and are worried about their jobs and the economy, but Joe Biden’s record and proposals prove that he is ill-suited for a role in this fight. While he was vice president, he oversaw the most sluggish economic recovery this country has seen since World War II. He supported disastrous, job-killing trade deals like NAFTA and TPP and his proposal to enact the economy-strangling Green New Deal as a response to this crisis is about the worst remedy imaginable.”
Despite Biden’s claims about the president, Murtaugh argues that the president has been working hard to negotiate stimulus packages for unemployed workers and distressed businesses.
As of Thursday afternoon, there were more than 234,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States.