WH Adviser Belittles Media Coverage Of Staggering Unemployment As 'Pity Party'

[TomCADem]

Source: TPM

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Monday disparaged the media’s coverage of the staggering 14.7 percent unemployment rate in April caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That was a pity party yesterday on the Sunday shows,” Navarro complained on “Fox and Friends,” singling out CBS News “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan, ABC News “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos and “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.

“This is not the Great Depression,” the White House official continued. “Anybody who thinks this is the Great Depression doesn’t understand either history or economics.”

Navarro claimed that President Donald Trump had built “the strongest and most beautiful economy” before the virus took hold.

Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/white-house-adviser-pity-party-media-coverage-unemployment

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interesting WH approach. If you complain about losing your job or suffering from COVID-19, then you must he a self-pitying loser.

[McKim]

1. Brilliant Quote for the Lincoln Group's Ads.

This will play brilliantly with the Lincoln Group’s ads. This is a real winner for the Biden campaign. Take this and spread it on social media and everywhere.

[zentrum]

4. Yes!

[C_U_L8R]

2. Their beligerance is revealing

You know when they resort to smacktalk and namecalling, they're losing really badly.

[area51]

3. Keep flapping your lips, Navarro,

the Trump supporters should love the insult.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. 14.7% only beginning. Will rival Great Depression before this is done. Ireland already 28%

Because they are ahead on the virus curve.

[progree]

6. Employment-to-population ratio the lowest its ever been - statistics begin Jan. 1948

Per Bureau of Labor Statistics May 8, 2020, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm :

In April the employment-to-population ratio is the lowest since records of that began in January 1948 (72 years ago)

Ditto the unemployment rate (except it is at the highest, not the lowest, since that seasonally adjusted series began in January 1948)

And the April numbers come from a sample week of April 12-18. Many more millions of jobs were lost since then, according to the weekly new unemployment claims reports

Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics admits the official unemployment rate is almost 5 percentage points higher than the 14.7% reported due to classification errors of some of the household survey interviewers (making it close to 20%)

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

As was the case in March, special instructions sent to household survey
interviewers called for all employed persons absent from work due to coronavirus-related business
closures to be classified as unemployed on temporary layoff. However, it is apparent that not all
such workers were so classified.

If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to "other reasons" (over
and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical April) had been classified as unemployed
on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been almost 5 percentage points higher
than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data
from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions
are taken to reclassify survey responses.

More Details:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=581690

[ZenDem]

7. No, a Pity Party is when...

...you and a bunch of your chubby couch potato friends march around with bazookas strapped to your back whining because someone won't let you get a doughnut without wearing a mask.

It is NOT millions of people terrified that they won't be able to keep their homes, feed their kids, hug their parents, say good bye to their husbands and wives before they die.

Assholes.

[dhill926]

11. what you said...

[lonely bird]

8. To call Navarro a shithead

Is to insult shitheads.

[keithbvadu2]

9. The guy with a good paying gov't job calls the unemployed a pity party.

The guy with a good paying gov't job calls the unemployed a pity party.

[Danascot]

10. So the WH has no pity for the 35 million unemployed Americans

and counting.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. "the strongest and most beautiful economy" - the arselicker was saying that directly to Trump

because no one else talks like that. And only a toady "economist" without a shred of self-respect would say Trump built it.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. In Addition...

...the economy was more "beautiful" 4 times since WW2 compared to the last 7 years, and 4 of those were under BHO!
So, at best they built 3/7ths of the 5th most "beautiful" economy.

[tclambert]

14. Yeah, why pity the unemployed? If they don't wanna be unemployed, they should get jobs!

Isn't that what Republicans always say about the less fortunate?

[summer_in_TX]

15. If I had the power for editorial decisions in a newsroom...

I'd be doing feature stories every newscast following the real-life stories of hardship of Americans right now.

Seeing the heart-breaking stories made a big difference in American attitudes in the 1980s when Reaganomics left many families on the streets. And it caused the Reagan administration to make changes.

Day-in and day-out, that would run on every newscast.

[Aussie105]

16. Scorn is not a good thing to heap

onto desperate people.

They tend to react in unpredictable ways. But Fox viewers will most likely agree with him - the ones that still have a job, that is.
The others may be a bit annoyed or realize they don't matter to the spin doctors.