How much will the new jobs report help Trump?

[Progressive Pessimist]

Maybe a little. It gives him some new rhetoric to claim that he is capable of helping the economy recover...but that relies on people forgetting that it got f***ed up in the first place under his leadership. Granted, Americans apply such low standards to Trump, and have such short memories, that maybe it could work for him, unfortunately.

Overall though, 13% unemployment is still really bad and an eventual recovery from much less severe recessions didn't really help Carter, Ford, or HW very much. Trump is polishing a turd here and its in the midst of a pandemic which leaves over 100,000 Americans dead and significant social unrest. Americans also tend to be very subjective in how they grade an economy, and those out of work still will perceive Trump as accountable for their malaise regardless of slightly positive macro level news. That's just the way it is, for better or worse, when you're President. 13% of the American out of work is still significant, it's still a lot of frustrated people. As long as Democrats stay on the offensive against Trump here, it still might not be worth worrying about too much. They need to keep reminding voters about how Trump bungled the COVID response and how that was partly responsible for the economy tanking. Biden can also easily claim that Trump squandered the economy that he and Obama handed him which they brought back from an abyss as well.

Also, let's not underestimate Trump's ability to make yuge mistakes when he gets cocky and overconfident. Today, already, he had that distasteful gaffe with "George Floyd happily looking down" which seems to have overshadowed the report. Trump just can't help but let his impulsive tendencies get the better of him.