he going to appear weak? what happens in hong kong might affect his ability to negotiate this. the chinese are watching, you know, all of this chaos as well. republicans understand i think the one thing standing between them and a potential serious defeat in 2020 is this economy. look, the president s ratings have been historically low despite this incredibly strong economy and the strong stock market. you start losing those elements and seeing the unemployment rate tick up or the stock market anticipating a recession, and, you know, it doesn t take much to go from 43% approval rating down to 38% approval rating. that is a blowout. charlie, everybody likes the idea of winning but what happens when you are actually losing? we learned yesterday u.s. steel is about to layoff employees in the state of michigan. and their second quarter earnings were one-third of what they were in the same quarter last year. but just last week president trump said the steel industry is
broke this extraordinary story. nbc s benecoli collins. here is the deal. here is this group. they run this thing called theepoch times. if you re over 50 on facebook you probably got one of these ads. in fact they sent out physical mailers talking about deep state and how hillary clinton is part of a group taking over the government. they are pretty much everywhere and their end goal, the spiritual group, is to bring about a judgment day that will pit communist and anyone who is sympathetic to him to heaven. they think donald trump is the guy bringing that about. what is interesting about this is in the age of trump we ve seen grifters pop up everywhere. with this kind of money? this is the thing. it looks like a regular, conservative outlet.
rolled out this morning its first television ad buy of the entire campaign. it is a trump focused ad, which a narrator talks about joe biden essentially restoring the soul of the country, something biden talks about a good deal on the campaign trail and even uses polling data to make that same argument, saying this is the guy who can defeat donald trump and that ll be airing go trump fan here in the coffee shop here in des moines that ll be airing across the state, six figure ad buy. pretty significant investment in the hawkeye state in mid august. all right. joe biden is not the only one making it all about trump. his wife, dr. jill biden is, too. talk to us about her most recent comments because they re getting a lot of attention. reporter: yeah. this was interesting. jill biden was campaigning for her husband in new hampshire yesterday and this could be one of those things you might call a gaffe by a traditional definition. a gaffe in politics is sometimes saying the most ho
the candidate making the argument that you may not have to love joe biden but he is the guy who can beat donald trump. take a listen to what she said yesterday in new hampshire. i know that not all of you are committed to my husband. and i respect that. but i want you to think about your candidate, his or her electability, and who s going to win this race. you know, a lot of times i say, oh, you know, polls don t mean anything. polls don t mean anything. but if they re consistent and consistently saying the same thing, i think you can t dismiss that. kennedyesque rallying cry? no. but it does line up with what i hear time and time again from voters in every state we go to. the number one priority of democratic primary voters is beating this president and there you hear jill biden say it. she believes her husband is the best position to do that job. steph? all right. thank you so much garrett.