On Thursday morning’s CNN Newsroom, host Jim Sciutto refused to air any live coverage of President Trump’s White House press briefing about surging employment, despite MSNBC even airing the address. Instead, the partisan hack brought on Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell to downplay the jobs report while the briefing was happening and blunt any information that could benefit Trump in the 2020 campaign. All of it an effort to bolster the election chances of their candidate, Joe Biden.
Right off the bat, Rampell bashed the jobs report:
RAMPELL: The bad news is this is a snapshot that was essentially taken in mid-June. That's when the survey from the Labor Department was fielded. And since then, of course, we have seen a huge spike, a resurgence of infections, and reclosing of a lot of the very industries that seemed to do a lot of the rehiring. So leisure and hospitality, for example, had -- had been responsible for about two of all -- two of every five job -- jobs that were added and leisure and hospitality establishments have been reclosed in Texas, in California, in Florida, et cetera. So that, alongside a number of other metrics that we’ve seen in the -- in the couple of weeks since this survey was fielded have suggested that the recovery may have sort of plateaued or even maybe stalling out despite these very strong looking numbers from mid-June.
She was not interested in acknowledging that the economy is recovering. CNN cares about Biden winning the presidency, and Trump overseeing a strong economy hurts the Democrat’s chances.
Never mind that the 4.8 million jobs gained in June is the largest recorded increase in U.S. history. Forget that the unemployment rate is declining and the stock market is going up.
Sciutto joined in on the gloom and doom predictions:
Big picture issue here, right, is that -- that you can't sustainably ride the roller coaster here, right? That, you know, many economists and health experts will make the point and business owners I have talked to that -- that the two go hand in hand. Economic recovery and controlling the outbreak because when you have people getting infected at big rates again, then that invariably brings shutdown which brings economic consequences, right?
Most absurdly, Sciutto even suggested the administration might be lying about the numbers:
Help me out with something that I just can’t understand because every time these numbers come out, there's a question about categorization and are the headline numbers somewhat misleading? Our Christine Romans was making the point yes, 11.1% official unemployment, but in reality, it’s closer to 12 because -- because of how the Labor Department is categorizing people. Can you explain that?
After undermining the jobs report for several minutes, Sciutto finally played a short taped clip of the press conference:
SCIUTTO: It’s hard. I mean, listen, there are a lot of jobless coming across the transom at once. So -- so -- so it’s sorta like drinking from a fire hose. Catherine Rampell, so good to have you break it all down for us. Thanks very much. The president has been speaking at -- at the White House, touting these jobs numbers. Here's what he said just moments ago. Let's have a listen.
[Cuts to video]
DONALD TRUMP: The unemployment rate fell by more than two percentage points, down to just about 11%. We're down to the 11% number. We started at a number very much higher than that. As you know, we broke the record last month and we broke it again this month in an even bigger way. This news comes on top of May's extraordinary jobs report which was revised upwards, by the way, to 2.7 million jobs. It was 2.5, that was last month. And that was a record setter.
It is worth noting that CNN aired all of Biden’s partisan campaign speech on June 30th. It is clear which candidate the DNC-approved channel is promoting to its viewers. The NewsBusters Twitter page showed the Big Picture:
Which one is not like the others? 9:49 AM EDT. pic.twitter.com/Xv8uBEnKar
— NewsBusters (@newsbusters) July 2, 2020
CNN does not care about covering good economic news, it only wants to see Trump fail.
This Democratic propaganda was brought to viewers by Amazon, Tractor Supply, and Big Lots.
Read the full transcript here:
CNN Newsroom07/02/20
9:38:43 AM
JIM SCIUTTO: The U.S. economy created 4.8 million jobs last month. The unemployment rate falling to 11.1%. We should add 1.4 million Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week. Those of course a measure of folks who lost their jobs. CNN political commentator Catherine Rampell joins us now. So--so, Catherine, this was the result of reopening in -- in many states and a bigger number than expected. How good of the news is this? How -- how good of a piece of news is this?
CATHERINE RAMPELL (CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR; WASHINGTON POST OPINION COLUMNIST): So the good news is that, yes, employers were able to rehire. There was some concern that once they laid off their employees they would become sort of unattached to those previous relationships, it would be hard to get them rehired again. The bad news is this it a snapshot that was essentially taken in mid-June. That's when the survey from the labor department was fielded. And since then, of course, we have seen a huge spike, a resurgence of infections, and reclosing of a lot of the very industries that seemed to do a lot of the rehiring. So leisure and hospitality, for example, had -- had been responsible for about two of all -- two of every five job -- jobs that were added and leisure and hospitality establishments have been reclosed in Texas, in California, in Florida, et cetera. So that, alongside a number of other metrics that we’ve seen in the -- in the couple of weeks since this survey was fielded have suggested that the recovery may have sort of plateaued or even maybe stalling out despite these very strong looking numbers from mid-June.
SCIUTTO: Big picture issue here, right, is that -- that you can't sustainably ride the roller coaster here, right? That, you know, many economists and health experts will make the point and business owners I have talked to that -- that the two go hand in hand. Economic recovery and controlling the outbreak because when you have people getting infected at big rates again, then that invariably brings shutdown which brings economic consequences, right?
RAMPELL: Right
SCIUTTO: Is that -- is that how folks should be looking at this?
RAMPELL: Right. And it’s not just the official government shutdown decree that matters here. There’s actually a new working paper from a couple of economists at the University of Chicago that finds that what seems to matter for business activity and -- and presumably resulting in hiring has to do with how fearful people are of getting sick, independent of whether the government actually tells them you must stay home
SCIUTTO: Yep.
RAMPELL: -- or tells them you can’t go to work.
SCIUTTO: Yep.
RAMPELL: -- So if there is fear out there of people getting sick, they’re not going to resume their normal economic activities.
SCIUTTO: Yeah, they’re not going to go to the restaurant, they’re not going to go on a plane for vacation. Help me out with something that I just can’t understand because every time these numbers come out, there's a question about categorization and are the headline numbers somewhat misleading? Our Christine Romans was making the point yes, 11.1% official unemployment, but in reality, it’s closer to 12 because -- because of how the labor department is categorizing people. Can you explain that?
RAMPELL: Yeah, they’re -- they’re trying really hard to get these numbers right and every time this jobs report comes out there’s a little note at the bottom basically expressing the frustration. They say that we're telling our -- our people who are administering the surveys to collect the data a certain way, but you know, we're in a weird time right now. This survey was not designed for what happens during a pandemic. And the result is that a number of people who are responding to these surveys are saying, yeah, I'm still employed, I still have a job, I was just absent for work for other reasons. When in fact, they should have been counted as being on temporary layoff.
SCIUTTO: Right. Okay.
RAMPELL: -- So that’s what that miss-categorization issue has to do with. It’s not, you know, a conspiracy. They’re -- they’re trying to get it right.
SCIUTTO: I see.
RAMPELL: It's just really hard to measure.
SCIUTTO: It’s hard. I mean, listen, there are a lot of jobless coming across the transom at once. So -- so -- so it’s sorta like drinking from a fire hose. Catherine Rampell, so good to have you break it all down for us. Thanks very much. The president has been speaking at -- at the White House, touting these jobs numbers. Here's what he said just moments ago. Let's have a listen.
[Cuts to video]
DONALD TRUMP: The unemployment rate fell by more than two percentage points, down to just about 11%. We're down to the 11% number. We started at a number very much higher than that. As you know, we broke the record last month and we broke it again this month in an even bigger way. This news comes on top of May's extraordinary jobs report which was revised upwards, by the way, to 2.7 million jobs. It was 2.5, that was last month. And that was a record setter.
