The Hill’s Campaign Report: Backlash grows over Trump’s reported comments on fallen troops

Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, your daily rundown on all the latest news in the 2020 presidential, Senate and House races. Did someone forward this to you? Click here to subscribe.

We’re Julia Manchester, Max Greenwood and Jonathan Easley. Here’s what we’re watching today on the campaign trail:

 

LEADING THE DAY: 

President Trump is facing intense backlash from his critics after The Atlantic reported late Thursday that he made disparaging remarks about fallen American soldiers. 

The publication reported that Trump referred to fallen American soldiers as “losers” and “suckers” because they died, among other claims. 

Joe Biden gave a blistering rebuke of the reported remarks in a speech that was supposed to be on the economy on Friday, invoking his late son Beau Biden, who served in the Army. 

“Let me be real clear, when my son an assistant U.S. attorney and he volunteered to go to Kosovo while the war was going on as a civilian, he wasn’t a sucker,” Biden told reporters in Delaware. “When my son volunteered to join the United States military as the attorney general, he went to Iraq for a year, won the Bronze Star and other commendations. The servicemen and women he served with, particularly those that did not come home were not losers.” 

Earlier on Friday, Biden’s campaign held a call with Gold Star father Khizr Khan, along with Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Conor Lamb, who are both veterans. 

Khan, who is one of the president’s most vocal opponents, said Trump’s alleged comments show the president’s life is a “testament to selfishness.”

Duckworth, who lost both her legs while serving in Iraq, also slammed Trump’s remarks  on the call, saying, “I take my wheelchair and my titanium legs over Donald Trump’s supposed bone spurs any day.” 

Trump is vehemently denying he ever made the comments, calling the story “fake.” 

“It’s a fake story written by a magazine that was probably not going to be around much longer, but it was a totally fake story and that was confirmed by many people that were actually there,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. “It was a terrible thing that somebody could say the kind of things — especially to me because I have done more for the military than almost anybody else.”

Defense Secretary Mark Esper also defended the president in a statement on Friday. 

“President Trump has the highest respect and admiration for our nation’s military members, veterans and families,” Esper said. “That is why he has fought for greater pay and more funding for our armed forces.”

The administration has produced on-the-record denials from current administration officials who were traveling with the president when the remarks were reportedly made.

Perhaps the most notable came from former national security adviser John Bolton, a Trump critic who has written a tell-all book accusing the president of overseeing a corrupt and chaotic administration, who told The New York Times he was on the trip and did not hear the president make the alleged remarks.

“I didn’t hear that,” Bolton said. “I’m not saying he didn’t say them later in the day or another time, but I was there for that discussion.”

 

THE GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS ECONOMY:

New polls show Biden leading Trump on many of the core issues defining the 2020 election, including law and order, curbing violence in major cities, the coronavirus and China.

One bright spot for Trump where he continues to lead: the economy.

The U.S. added 1.4 million jobs in August, marking the fourth consecutive month of job gains and declining unemployment since coronavirus lockdown.

The unemployment rate is at 8.4 percent in August, down from 10.2 percent in July, the first time the unemployment rate has fallen below the 10 percent mark since March. The unemployment rate peaked at 14.4 percent in April, when more than 20 million Americas lost their jobs.

But the number of unemployed Americans is still 11.5 million above the level in February, before the shutdown. The economy has recovered less than half of the more than 22 million job losses recorded since the start of the pandemic.

Many jobs are not coming back. The number of permanent losses increased by 534,000 in August, bringing the total to 2.1 million since February, as some temporary layoffs have become permanent.

Industries such as food and beverage services have been hit hard by the pandemic, regaining 134,000 jobs in August but clocking in at 2.5 million fewer since February. Retailers added 249,000 jobs but are at 655,000 fewer than in February.

There was a burst of temporary hiring in August from the government adding 238,000 census workers, or about one-fourth of the month’s total jobs gains, who will lose their jobs when their work is complete.

Biden gave a speech from Delaware on Friday saying “there is real cause for concern” in the economic data.

“The pace of job gains in August was slower than in July — and significantly slower than May or June. More and more temporary layoffs are turning into permanent layoffs. After six months in the pandemic, we are less than halfway back to where we were — with 11.5 Million Americans not yet getting their jobs back. We’re still down 720,000 manufacturing jobs. In fact, Trump may well be the only president in modern history to leave office with fewer jobs than when he took office. Talk to a lot of real working people who are being left behind — ask them, do you feel the economy is coming back?” – Biden

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh accused Biden of “root[ing] for bad news.”

“In just four months, more than 10.6 million jobs – nearly half of the jobs lost to the pandemic – have already been recovered. While the work is not finished, President Trump’s policies positioned us to fight through the coronavirus crisis and reopen faster than doomsayers like Biden predicted. While Biden hopes for economic ruin to buoy his political fortunes, President Trump is leading the nation, working every day to Make America Great Again again.” – Murtaugh

 

VOTE BY MAIL:

First in the nation…North Carolina mailed out the first ballots of the 2020 election on Friday, sending more than half a million ballots to voters who requested them. So far, some 643,000 voters have requested absentee ballots in North Carolina, and hundreds of thousands more are expected to do so in the coming weeks. 

That’s a huge increase over 2016 levels. At this point four years ago, just 38,871 North Carolina voters had asked to receive mail-in ballots.

A handful of other states will begin sending out mail ballots in the coming weeks, and the numbers are also expected to be staggering given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In nine states and the District of Columbia, voters won’t have to request their ballots at all. They’ll have mail ballots sent directly to their homes.

The Hill’s Reid Wilson has more on the first absentee ballots here.

Earlier this week, Trump went to North Carolina and urged voters to mail in their ballots and then to show up in-person at the polls to see if they are stopped from voting a second time.

It’s a felony to vote twice. Biden on Friday accused Trump of trying to undermine the legitimacy of the election with his remarks.

“I think it’s all designed to create so much chaos that no matter what the outcome of the election is that it’s thrown up into the air,” Biden said.

 

FROM CONGRESS:

MA-04…Jake Auchincloss won the Democratic primary in Massachusetts’s 4th congressional district, putting him on track to replace Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.) in Washington next year. 

Auchincloss, a Newton city councilor and Marine veteran, emerged from a crowded primary field with less than 23 percent of the vote. To give you an idea of just how close the primary was, Auchincloss led his closest rival Jesse Mermell by just more than a percentage point. But that win virtually guarantees him a seat in the House next year. Massachusetts’s 4th District has been represented by Democrats since 1947. 

The Hill’s Tal Axelrod has more on the primary here.