President Trump’s 2016 campaign manager is expressing concern that rising unemployment from the coronavirus pandemic could hamper the president’s chance of winning a second term in office.
Corey Lewandowski warned that the near-record unemployment, which economists predict could reach 16% for April, could put the president in a difficult position come November.
“I’m very concerned,” he told Just The News on Wednesday. “We’ve got 30 million Americans out of work right now, we’ve got an unemployment rate north of 19%. If you’re a political guy, that’s a devastating number, so you have to be concerned about it.”
Lewandowski also warned that opening the country too soon could also hurt the president’s reelection chances.
“It’s a huge gamble,” he acknowledged in a podcast interview with David Brody, the outlet’s host of The Pod’s Honest Truth.
“If there is a resurgence, not just in the next four weeks or six weeks, but as the weather turns again, if come the fall in September, in October, we see an uptick again in the COVID-19 pandemic coming back because we didn’t handle it right the first time — we still don’t have testing, and we don’t have a solution — that is devastating as an incumbent president of the United States,” he said.
Lewandowski also noted that a Trump loss in November is far from a sure thing and provided the president with advice on how he can beat former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“My advice to [the president] is, ‘Hey, let’s have a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate every day between now and Election Day with you and Joe Biden up on stage,’” he said. “He’s either going to fall asleep or make so many mistakes that the people of America are going to say there’s no way this guy can be our president.”
