that was president trump in dallas at yesterday s nra convention attacking the mueller investigation, all the while toutinged latest unemployment numbers. it is 3.9%, the lowest since 2000. by race, african-americans continue to make up the highest jobless rate. joining me is president and ceo of the national urban league. the organization is out with its annual state of black america report, one of the leading benchmark on on factors including jobs. mark, good to see you. thanks for joining me. good morning. so we re going to get to this report in just a moment. i m curious, are you willing to give the president any credit for the declining unemployment rate? yes, it significantly started under president obama s administration. but president trump has at least kept it going in the right direction. his statement should be we have had the lowest unemployment rate in history. thank you, president obama, for giving me an economy and rouxing
speech to the nra convention in dallas. african-american unemployment has reached another all-time in history record low. and, by the way, kanye west must have some power because you probably saw, i doubled my african-american poll numbers. we went from 11 to 22 in one week. there is a little more to the poll than the president is letting on. but while that is good news for african americans looking for jobs, as a group, as a population, african americans still lag behind whites in several key areas. employment being one of them. household income being another, education and life expectancy. now, every year the national urban league takes a closer look at those challenges in something called the state of black america report. the group s report for this year was released today and for the first time it has a section focusing on the digital divide. joining us to talk about this is
joe earl we are in year the national urban league released the 41st edition of its annual state of black america report and to crib the report s own language if full equality in 2017 was a pie then black and hispanic americans would only get about three slices and even that is newly threatened in the trump era. it s against this backdrop that the national urban league will host it s 2017 conference in st. louis this week. joining me now is marc morial, president of the national urban league and former mayor of new orleans. marc, looking forward to joining you at the conference and it is where we were just three years ago dealing there with the
joining us from washington, mark muriel. the urban league is out with its annual state of black america report. let s get to the report. some of the key findings. if full equality with white americans was represented by the figure 100%, right now african-americans have just over 72% equality, just a tiny increase from last year. so explain that. you all have been talking about health care this morning. those increases, year to year, have been incremental. nonetheless, they represent increases. so, we must resist any effort to
that s why our mainstream plan is not only about public investment, it s also about incentivizing investment to create the kind of quality jobs we need in this country. all right. thank you so much. always good to be with you all. always great to have you with us, mr. mayor. the state of black america report releases later this morning. mark muriel, thank you so much. stunning last 24 hours of interviews with the president of the united states. his bizarre claims about andrew jackson, the civil war. his confusing statements about what s in the republican health care bill and, perhaps most frightening, saying he would be honored to meet the dictator of north korea the same week he said we may be entering a big, big war with them. we ll be asking presidential historians doris kearns. -goodwin and douglas brinkley if they ve ever seen anything like it. plus senator john mccain will be