WASHINGTON
(AP) — It’s time to spread the good news. That’s the difficult job Vice
President Mike Pence undertook Friday as the Trump administration works
to make voters feel better about the direction of the country amid a
coronavirus pandemic and racial unrest.
Pence traveled
Friday to Pennsylvania, an important swing state with 20 electoral
votes that will be bitterly contested. He began with a listening session
with faith and community leaders to hear their concerns following the
death of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. He later talked up the
economy at a manufacturing plant.
Pence stressed
the same points that President Donald Trump has made, but with a bit
more realism. While Trump told those in Dallas on Thursday that bringing
Americans together will “go quickly” and “very easily,” Pence spoke in
Pittsburgh about finding opportunities “in the long term” to address
what he described as some historic inequities.
Pence’s visit
comes at a time when polls suggest that a growing percentage of
Americans view the the country as heading in the wrong direction. The
president’s prospects for reelection rely greatly on turning that trend
around. Trump seized on a better-than-expected jobs report released last
week, and his campaign quickly made an ad proclaiming “the great
American comeback has begun.”
But he can’t
just focus on the economy. The administration also must address the
concerns raised by the recent killings of Floyd, Breonna Taylor and
Ahmad Aubery.
Pence’s trip
to Pennsylvania was part of what is described as the “Great American
Comeback Tour.” The visit was organized by America First Policies, a
nonprofit associated with the America First Action super PAC supporting
Trump’s reelection.
Joe Biden’s Democratic presidential campaign called it a “cynically-titled” tour.
“This is not a
time for victory laps,” said Biden campaign manager Kate Bedingfield.
“The pandemic continues to claim nearly a thousand American lives every
day and unemployment in our nation remains at Depression-era levels.”
For Pence,
visiting with ministers is friendly territory. While criticism of Black
Lives Matter is out, criticism of Planned Parenthood is in as the
conversation can quickly turn to the issue of abortion, as it did a few
times Friday. Still, the participants voiced their frustrations with
Pence in a way that was not visible when Trump met with black supporters
at the White House earlier this week.
“I’m tired. I
am mentally, physically and spiritually tired,” said Ross Owens, a local
pastor who said he grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods of
Pittsburgh. “I’m tired that people still do not acknowledge that
systemic racism is real, and they ignore the billions of voices that
exists, and they say, ‘No, that’s not true,’ because of the comfort of
their own bubble.”
“I can tell
you that I have three sons who have been stopped collectively at least a
dozen times by the police, even some black police in the city of
Pittsburgh,” said Cheryl Allen, a former judge on the Superior Court of
Pennsylvania. “It’s a mindset that if you are a young black man driving a
nice car, you must either be a drug dealer or you stole the car.”
She said her
children were never charged and noted that when police learned who owned
the car, that tended to be “the end of the story.”
“But that’s not the case for most people,” Allen said.
Pence told the group that “this is just about the best hour I’ve had in a long time” and called it “real.”
In the
afternoon, Pence turned to the economy with a speech at Oberg Industries
in Sarver, a town about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of
Pittsburgh.
Pennsylvania’s
unemployment rate stood at 15.1% in April as companies closed to slow
the spread of the coronavirus. It was at 5.7% when Trump was elected.
Hiring did rebound in May after two grueling months of job losses. But
those gains appear to reflect temporarily laid-off employees returning
to work and increases in people with part-time jobs rather than an
economy at full throttle.
Pence chose to
place his emphasis on the number of jobs created in May rather than
those lost the previous two months. He noted that May’s gain of 2.5
million jobs was a record and that economists had been expecting
companies to slash 8 million jobs.
“We’re very confident that it’s just the beginning, and this American comeback has just begun,” Pence said.
During his
stop in Pittsburgh, Pence spoke with CBS News about the president’s
controversial walk earlier this month from the White House to nearby St.
John’s Church, a path that was cleared for him by law enforcement
officials who deployed tear gas and flash bang devices against peaceful
protesters demonstrating against police brutality and racism.
Pence told CBS
that he was encouraged to stay behind at the White House “out of an
abundance of caution” but that he would have been happy to walk shoulder
to shoulder” with the president, who stood outside the fire-damaged
church and held up a Bible in front of the news media.
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