criminal justice reform, people they feel are incarcerated unfairly or police that are out of bounds, and they re not talking toward what people want to hear. right, right, right. answering the phone when it is ringing, they call you crazy. barack obama and mark mckinnon said tell the story, and there is a story to tell, but even joe biden at this moment, some would argue of great leadership on the world stage, not resonating in the polls. well, it is tough when you have inflation and everything you have these great jobs reports and the problem is that, you know, most people have a job that want a job. that s part of the story the democrats need to tell. you have to say the reason we have inflation is we fought covid, jobs are up and that s one of the consequences of the good news. former new york city mayor bill de blasio has been watching this. i wonder what you think democrats should do moving forward? i will suggest a worry that i have. i think they re getting tweaked
the base line. that woman who you heard from just there, she was making $5 an hour without tips. she said that is simply not good enough. she says that $15 an hour at a minimum would be a great way for her to be able to feel comfortable with what she is taking home every single day. wolf? thank you very much. and to our viewers, thanks for watching. i m wolf blitzer in washington. i ll be back at 6:00 p.m. eastern in the situation room. at this hour with kate bolduan starts right now. this is cnn breaking news. hello, everyone. i m kate bolduan, we begin with breaking news. the labor department reporting a second straight month of disappointing jobs reports. the u.s. added just 199,000 new jobs in december. that s the fewest jobs added in any month of 2021. on the bright side, unemployment is down 3.9 now to 3.9%.
chinese leaders xi jinping and russian president vladimir putin, together for the opening ceremony of the winter olympics, forming a united front in its tension with the west. our panel has something to say about that, plus breaking news. plus, why immediate team is ignoring the report out of john hopkins. why the lockdowns were ineffective and destructive. we begin tonight with a state of the economy, the biden administration had a much better than expected january jobs report. the latest on what the white house is not talking about: runaway inflation. speak of president and the white house are publicly warning that the january jobs report might be dismal. instead, 467,000 jobs were added, and we are learning expectations for january might have been lowered. the disappointing jobs reports for november-december were underestimated by the labor department, which revived
obama you see ukraine lose crimea and now you see under biden, you re seeing the threat on eastern ukraine. so, again, we need to go back to an america strong where these problems never began, griff, in the first place. so it s really about what biden is doing with regards to weakness, we need to be strong on sanctions and look, you ve seen him botch afghanistan. do you really want him in charge? do you want president biden in charge of something infinitely more complex than that? i mean, these challenges go back to probably 354ad between the east and west. this is an ancient issue and i don t think that biden is up to the task to solve it, but we need to make sure to supply our allies. griff: we shall see. we ll turn to the economy at home. jobs reports, 467,000 net new jobs and president biden had this to say at the white house.
it comes alongside the largest drop in unemployment rate in a single year on record. the largest reduction in childhood poverty ever recorded in a single year. and the strongest economic growth this country has seen in nearly 40 years. the president also noted the economic cloud still hanging over the country from inflation and his approval ratings, of course, remain underwater. our chief white house correspondent kaitlan collins joins us now. so was the white house expecting the report to be as positive as it with uz? not even close. they were actually pretty relieved today when this came out, anderson, because they had been preparing reporters behind the scenes saying they did not believe this was going to be a good jobs report because look at when the data was collected. it was peak of january, when covid cases were about 800,000 per day. you were seeing millions of people stay home from work, workers not going out and seeking work. and so, they were very worried it was going to