at the Saturday meeting In Gastonia, North Carolina, Donald Trump thanked God for the October jobs report that showed job growth had slowed due to the recent hurricanes that swept through the western part of the state.
“How good was it?” Trump asked the crowd. “To get those numbers four days before the vote…” Trump said. “He said and followed up. Then he paused and looked up, perhaps looking at God. God said: “thank you. thank you.”
“He prefers solving problems rather than solving them.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the U.S. economy added just 12,000 jobs in October. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su attributed the slowdown in growth to “significant impacts from the hurricanes and strike activity.” This is a reference to Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the ongoing strike by Boeing mechanics. Noting that unemployment remains at 4.1% and inflation is falling, Su said the employment report “reflects an unusual month rather than a change in the broader economic outlook.”
Trump’s comments about jobs weren’t the worst thing he said this weekend. He labeled journalists covering his rally as “monsters,” mocked transgender people, and called his opponents “idiots” and products of political correctness over racist and sexist content. He defended the racist Madison Square Garden rally. On Friday night in Milwaukee, he inexplicably expressed his frustration with audio issues by pretending to perform oral sex on a microphone stand.
But the reaction to the jobs report was evident in the eagerness with which Trump treated bad news for Americans as good news for himself. To be fair, he described the numbers as “bad news” in his speech Friday. But on Saturday in North Carolina, he congratulations He claims he is gaining in a new report, even as hurricane economists say it caused devastating flooding and hundreds of deaths, including more than 100 in the state he spoke of, which helped slow hiring.
“I mean, how great would it be to fight back against the people who did that?” Trump mentioned the jobs report.
This wasn’t the only time he seemed to rejoice in his fate. Elsewhere in his speech, Trump, as he usually does on the campaign trail, celebrated the increase in border crossings since leaving office. He has consistently maintained the belief that trouble on the border is for his benefit. Earlier this year, Trump successfully lobbied to kill a bipartisan bill to increase security at the Mexican border. Trump’s push was widely understood as an effort to block Congress from attempting to address a problem he was using to attack Democrats. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a key author of the bill, said critics of the bill argued that “we don’t want President Trump to lose on that issue.”
Vice President Kamala Harris criticized President Trump’s opposition to the bill, saying it was “evidence that President Trump prefers solving problems rather than solving them.”
There was nothing in President Trump’s remarks Saturday to refute those criticisms.
