MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace seemed to roll out the red carpet for executive chief of staff Ron Klain to discuss the latest jobs report.
U.S. job growth shattered expectations in January, according to the jobs report released Friday from the Labor Department, adding 467,000 jobs, topping the 150,000 jobs gained forecast by Refinitiv economists who were pessimistic with their predictions due to the surge of the omicron variant. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4 percent.
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Wallace began with an introduction describing “major economic improvement,” saying the news was a “welcome surprise for the Biden administration” and highlighting the drop in COVID cases nationwide.
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. (NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
“It’s a good day, right? To be the White House chief of staff,” Wallace told Klain. “These are the economic numbers that [when] they don’t look this good, you point to the things that you’re doing to get them this good. And when they are this good, sometimes they get glossed over.”
“So let’s talk about them. And let me put them up again,” she said, repeating the same numbers she shared with viewers moments prior.
After showing the latest jobs numbers, Wallace asked Klain, “What is sort of the sense of why we were surprised in a good way this month?”
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Moments following Klain’s praise of the Biden agenda, the “Deadline: White House” host asked:
“So I have this theory that the Biden economy is like the Rodney Dangerfield of economies, like, it’s really good, but it doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Why do you think that is?” Wallace asked.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
She later told Klain, “People are mad. I don’t know that they can always explain why, but a lot of it ends up at the doorstep of any American president. How are you navigating the pandemic in terms of continuing to adhere to the science, but we’re really, I mean, the president seems to see where the country is done. They’re fed up.”
“Of course, we’re all fed up with the pandemic,” Klain responded. “We all want it over, but wanting it over doesn’t make it over, and what makes it over is doing the things that we’re doing here in the Biden administration.”
White House chief of staff Ron Klain. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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After asking if Biden was “frustrated” at advisers for not having COVID tests ready sooner, Wallace pivoted to how the president “is feeling” about the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Wallace has a history of seemingly soft interviews with Democrats and top Biden officials from Beto O’Rourke, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, to Dr. Anthony Fauci. She even referred to herself as a “Fauci groupie.”
FOX Business’ Megan Henney contributed to this report.
