Donald Trump is the only leader in the industrialized world, besides authoritarian dictators Vladamir Putin & Jair Bolsnoro, who still does not understand that the economy & the pandemic are inextricably linked. We shut down the economy…

48m Americans lost their jobs & we began to bend the curve - but this president gave up, refused to implement nat’l stds & pretends the virus will magically “sort of just disappear” even after 129k deaths & 50k new positive cases every day

Though this president is rightfully claiming credit for:

• An unemployment rate currently higher than at the height of the Great Recession

• A scarred labor market that won’t recover until 2030

• 15 straight weeks of 1m+ new unemployment claims…

• Unemployment that rises faster & recovers slower for Blacks & Latinos than Whites - Black unemployment at 15.4% Latinos 14.5% & Whites 10.1%

• Additional 600k workers permanently laid off last month

• 2.8m workers permanently unemployed…

• 1.3m more people than normal losing employment in June

• 4.6k retail stores have closed permanently - on track to surpass pre-Covid estimate of 12k closures & ‘19 record of 9.3 store closures

• Another enormous dropoff of consumer spending...

• Millions of small businesses closing b/c of failed PPP loan rollout w/14% of PPP recipient small businesses laying off employees

• 440k/41% of Black small businesses that have closed & 700k/32% of Latino small businesses that have closed.

June jobs report certainly reflects encouraging resurgences in business activity & rehiring of furloughed workers - in states that aggressively attacked Covid. But this report fails to account for the last 2 weeks of reversed shutdowns…

And the again furloughed workers in the sunbelt states of AZ, FL, TX & CA - as 40% of the US is halting or reversing reopening their economies. Number of laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits rose last week in TX, AZ & TN…

Unemployment recovery rankings of battleground states since start of Covid:

• GA (51st); FL (50th); KY (48th); NC (44th); ME (41st); SC (40th); MI (39th); CO (36th); OH (27th); TX (19th); PA (13th); AZ (declined to 40th since last wk); WI (7th)

And we still do not have a nat’l strategy. The president is sitting on $14b of unused congressionally-appropriated Covid funds. We still do not have enough tests, contrary to what the president claims. We have a mask shortage of 30 million…

We don’t have a fed system of contact tracing. We don’t have a fed mask mandate - even tho it could save us 5% GDP while saving 33k lives in next 3 months -- but @realDonaldTrump lacks the mental capacity to understand these economic ties…

While the rest of the industrialized world has aggressively tackled this virus & gone back to some sense of normalcy, we continue to die, get sick, & close our economies because of this inept, dishonest president.