Trump touts job gains in new ad

President Trump’s reelection campaign is touting recent August job gains in a new ad released Tuesday that slams Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for voicing support for potentially shutting down businesses again, which scientific advisers recommended doing during the pandemic. 

The ad highlighting Trump’s “great American comeback” will air this week in the battleground states of North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as on national cable, according to the campaign. 

The narrator of the 30-second ad says Trump’s “great American comeback is now underway,” with text on the ad praising 1.37 million new jobs created in August. But the ad fails to mention that the number of unemployed Americans is still 11.5 million above its pre-coronavirus level in February. 

The Labor Department reported last week the U.S. added 1.4 million jobs in August, bringing the unemployment rate to 8.4 percent from 10.2 percent in July. It was the first time since March the unemployment rate fell below 10 percent. The U.S. economy has now recovered roughly 10.7 million of the jobs lost to the pandemic as of August.

“In the race for a vaccine the finish line is approaching, safety protocols in place and the greatest economy the world has ever seen coming back to life, but Joe Biden wants to change that,” the narrator of the ad says. 

“Why would we ever let Biden kill countless American businesses, jobs and our economic future,” the narrator adds.

The ad cuts to a clip from a Biden interview from last month with ABC News. The Democrat said he “will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus.”

“I would shut it down, I would listen to the scientists,” he added.

In response to the ad, a Biden campaign spokesperson said “all of these claims are wrong,” also calling out a tweet from the president last month that hit Biden for stating he would shut down the economy if recommended by experts. 

“All of these claims are wrong. It’s not true that Biden wants to ignore ‘the science,’ or that he has presented any ‘plan’ for a ‘blanket shutdown,’ or that, as Trump seemed to suggest in the tweet, that Biden has declared he wants to shut down the country right now,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Rather, Biden said in an interview that he would follow the advice of scientists if they advised him to shut down the country if the combination of the coronavirus and the flu created a severe crisis in 2021.”