Trump’s shocking admission that he pushed to slow down coronavirus testing also highlights his fundamental misunderstanding of the economy.
- Trump is obsessed with the big numbers that give him simple ways of understanding if he’s winning or losing – like TV ratings, crowd sizes, testing numbers, and the stock market.
- That’s why his instinct is to try to keep the testing number low and the stock market high – even if those actions don’t help, and actually hurt, our country’s ability to emerge from this public health and economic crisis.
- But just like low testing numbers don’t mean we have fewer cases of COVID-19, high stock market prices don’t mean the economy is actually strong.
- What the economy actually needs to recover is a government that helps end this pandemic, helps workers and families keep their heads above the water, and starts to fix the underlying weaknesses that have made this crisis so much worse than it needed to be.
Congress needs to ignore Trump’s obsession with juicing the stock market and move quickly to help the workers and families who make up the actual economy.
- One key step would be quickly extending the expanded unemployment benefits that are set to expire at the end of next month.
- Trump’s allies continue threatening to cut millions of workers and families off of this economic lifeline – but 3 out of 4 voters support keeping or expanding them.
- Trump’s economic advisors are worried that extending unemployment benefits would keep workers off the job until it was safe for them to return – which is exactly why they should be extended.
- This shouldn’t be difficult: No worker should be forced to choose between her livelihood and her health – especially during a pandemic.
Trump tried to take credit at his rally for helping Black workers with his so-called “opportunity zones,” but the reality is that they are just one more opportunity for rich people to get even richer in Trump’s economy.
Navigator Research, 6/22/2020
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