President Donald Trump reacted Friday to the shocking unemployment numbers for the month of April, lamenting in an interview it was “fully expected” as the country shut down to prevent the spread of the Chinese coronavirus.
“It’s fully expected, there’s no surprise, everybody knows that … even the Democrats aren’t blaming me for that,” Trump said in an interview aired on Fox and Friends.
The unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April and the economy shed 20.5 million jobs.
The president recalled the moment his advisors told him he had to close down the booming economy to help slow the spread of the virus.
“We had the strongest economy in the history of the world, the strongest economy we’ve ever had and we had to close it which is artificial, we artificially closed it,” Trump said.
He defended the dramatic lockdowns across the country, saying they slowed the infection rate of the virus and lessened the death tolls in the country.
“They were right because if I didn’t would have lost two million,” Trump said, before adding he was confident the economy could bounce back quickly.
“Those jobs will all be back and they’ll be back very soon,” he said.
The president pointed to the dramatically low economic numbers as one more reason why the country had to open up and get back to work.
“People are ready to go, we got to get it open and safely,” he said.
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