President Joe Biden continues to distance himself from the recent debate, Trump distances himself from Project 2025 and the latest jobs report shows a sign of resilience in hiring despite inflationary pressures.
With air of defiance, Biden insists he is staying in 2024 race at Wisconsin rally
At a rally in the key battleground state of Wisconsin, President Joe Biden emphatically and defiantly declared he was staying in the 2024 race despite his assertion that people are trying to “push” him out in the wake of his performance at last week's debate.
“Guess what? They're trying to push me out of the race,” Biden said Friday. “Well let me say this as clearly as I can: I'm staying in the race, I’ll beat Donald Trump.”
Addressing an energized crowd in Madison, Biden noted that “millions of Democrats” voted for him to be the party’s 2024 nominee in “primaries all across America.”
“No one else – you, the voters, did that,” he said, adding: “some folks don’t seem to care who you voted for.”
The president’s reelection campaign is facing mounting questions from Democrats about Biden’s role as the party's nominee ahead following his disappointing debate performance against former President Donald Trump in Atlanta last week that rocked the political world.
Just hours before Biden took the stage on Friday, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who joined Biden’s meeting with Democratic governors aimed at quelling fears about his debate showing on Wednesday, urged the president to “carefully evaluate” whether he is the party’s best candidate to defeat Trump.
“Over the coming days, I urge him to listen to the American people and carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope to defeat Donald Trump,” the governor said in a statement. “Whatever President Biden decides, I am committed to doing everything in my power to defeat Donald Trump.”
Two House Democrats this week officially called on Biden to pull out of the race while others significantly stepped up their willingness to question whether he was the best candidate.
Asked if the president is considering the concerns expressed by some House Democrats on the way to Wisconsin, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the president is determined to move forward.
“He hears the concern, one bad night and he wants to move forward and that's what we’re doing,” Jean-Pierre said.
Biden also used Friday’s rally to go after the Supreme Court ruling this week granting presidents immunity for official acts as well as Trump himself, calling the former president “the biggest liar and the biggest threat to our democracy in American history.”
After the rally, Biden was set to sit down for an interview with ABC News that is scheduled to run Friday night. He will also campaign in Pennsylvania on Sunday.
Biden’s reelection campaign on Friday announced an “aggressive” strategy for July, which includes a $50 million ad blitz and fresh battleground state travel, in an effort to move on from last week’s debate.
Trump tries to distance himself from Project 2025
In a post on his social media platform on Friday, former President Donald Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, a laundry list of right-wing policy proposals assembled by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation in the event of a Republican win in the 2024 presidential election.
The post comes just days after Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, said on Trump ally Steve Bannon’s podcast that the United States is “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
In his Truth Social post, Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in November’s election, said that he is clueless about the particulars of the far-right agenda — which, among other things, calls for the dismantling of federal agencies, ousting of thousands of civil servants in favor of those loyal to a Republican administration, recommends mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, removing legal protections for sexual orientation and gender identity and cracking down on abortion and contraceptive care — even as President Joe Biden and Democratic allies have hammered him on it in the lead-up to November’s election.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump claimed. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Trump did not make clear what aspects of the plan he disagrees with, and it’s unclear the extent to which officials with his campaign and leaders of the far-right agenda are communicating or coordinating. The Republican former president’s campaign has its own webpage, Agenda47, which details his policy proposals.
But several former Trump officials, including former trade adviser Peter Navarro, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, Ken Cuccinelli, who a judge determined unlawfully held the role of acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and former White House Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought, have contributed to the proposal. Vought was recently tapped by the Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign to serve as policy director of the GOP’s platform committee.
Trump’s campaign has repeatedly denied coordination with Project 2025, saying in November of last year that “all 2024 campaign policy announcements will be made by President Trump or members of his campaign team. Policy recommendations from external allies are just that-- recommendations.”
“Despite our being crystal clear, some “allies” haven’t gotten the hint, and the media, in their anti-Trump zeal, has been all-to-willing to continue using anonymous sourcing and speculation about a second Trump administration in an effort to prevent a second Trump administration,” Trump campaign co-managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement in December. "Let us be very specific here: unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official.”
But Trump’s direct disavowal comes after Roberts’ appearance on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, in which he made his “second American Revolution” during a discussion about the Supreme Court’s ruling in the former president’s immunity claim last week.
“We ought to be really encouraged by what happened yesterday, and in spite of all of the injustice — which of course friends and audience of this show, of our friend Steve, know — we are going to prevail,” Roberts, referring to Bannon’s imprisonment for defying a congressional subpoena, told former Virginia Rep. Dave Brat, who hosted the interview.
U.S. employers add solid 206,000 jobs in June
U.S. employers added a solid 206,000 jobs in June, the U.S. Department of Labor reported on Friday, a sign of continued economic strength and outpacing expectations despite still-stubborn inflation.
The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to still-low 4.1%, up from 4%.
Economists been repeatedly predicting that the job market would lose momentum in the face of high interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve, only to see the hiring gains show unexpected strength.
"With today’s report that 206,000 jobs were created last month, a record 15.7 million jobs have been created during my Administration," President Joe Biden, whose administration has worked to convince Americans his economic policies are working despite inflationary pressures, said in a statement. "We have more work to do, but wages are growing faster than prices and more Americans are joining the workforce, with the highest share of working-age Americans in the workforce in over 20 years. That’s real progress for hardworking families who have the dignity and respect that comes with earning a paycheck and putting food on the table."
Biden used Friday's report to cast his economic policies against those of Republicans in Congress as he battles for reelection in November against former President Donald Trump.
"Too many Americans are still feeling squeezed by the cost of the living," Biden said. "I’m fighting to lower costs by taking on corporate price gouging, capping the cost of insulin and prescription drugs, and calling on Congress to lower rent by building 2 million new homes. Congressional Republicans have a different vision that sides with billionaires and special interests and will supercharge inflation. They’ll impose high consumer tariffs that will cost middle class families thousands of dollars each year, give a giant tax cut to the wealthy, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and allow big corporations to keep ripping off Americans.
"While they fight for Park Avenue, I’ll keep fighting for working families like the ones I grew up with in Scranton," he added.
Still, there are signs of an economic slowdown in the face of the Fed's series of interest rate hikes. The U.S. gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services — grew at a lethargic annual pace of 1.4% from January through March, the slowest quarterly pace in nearly two years.
Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of all U.S. economic activity and which has powered the expansion the past three years, rose at just a 1.5% pace last quarter after growing more than 3% in each of the previous two quarters. In addition, the number of advertised job openings has declined steadily since peaking at a record 12.2 million in March 2022.
Still, while employers might not be hiring so aggressively after having struggled to fill jobs the past two years, they aren’t cutting many, either. Most workers are enjoying an unusual level of job security.