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EAU CLAIRE Forty days before Election Day, Vice President Mike Pence stopped in Eau Claire to tout the Trump administrations record on the economy.

In friendly territory speaking to about 100 workers inside a countertop factory of Menards subsidiary Midwest Manufacturing the Republican vice president said President Donald Trump stands up for American jobs and American workers.

Pence highlighted the administrations efforts to roll back red tape, pass the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and bring back manufacturing jobs, saying U.S. businesses created more than 7 million jobs, including 61,000 in Wisconsin in Trumps first three years in office.

The president said early on we were going to bring back our factories, we were going to bring back jobs, we were going to bring back those four beautiful words Made in the USA and and thats just what weve done, Pence said, drawing applause from the audience.

The presidents daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, also addressed the crowd briefly, praising the craftsmanship she saw in a tour of Midwest Manufacturing and saying, Companies like yours, people like you, this is what President Trump is fighting for every single day.

The vice president, who chairs the White House Coronavirus Task Force, later acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a blow to the economy but insisted that Trump softened the impact by pushing for the distribution of personal protective equipment, ramping up testing and banning travel to the United States from China in late January actions Pence said saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.

Were slowing the spread, were working to flatten the curve and ... were opening up America again, Pence said.

Ivanka Trump backed up that claim, declaring, The great American comeback is well underway.

In Wisconsin, official seasonally adjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show total employment rose from 2.99 million in January 2017 when Trump took office to 3 million in January 2020, a gain of 11,900. Total employment dropped to 2.86 million in August, or 129,700 below the level in January 2017. State manufacturing jobs rose from 468,400 in January 2017 to 484,100 in January 2020 before dipping to 458,700 in August.

The campaign of Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden offered a starkly different take than Pence on the economy and Trumps handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in a statement released Thursday in advance of the vice presidents visit to Wisconsin.

This week, Wisconsin passed the grim milestone of 100,000 positive COVID-19 cases and theres no end in sight, said Kate Bedingfield, Biden for President deputy campaign manager. Infection rates are skyrocketing, tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs while tens of thousands more have dropped out of the labor force completely, small businesses have permanently closed, parents are anxious about sending their kids back to school all because President Trump and Vice President Pence still have no plan to get the virus under control.

By contrast, Bedingfield said, Biden has a plan to confront the pandemic and will restore the middle class and invest in Wisconsin manufacturing.

As of Thursday, the United States had reported nearly 7 million COVID-19 cases, or 22% of the 32 million cases worldwide, and 202,404 coronavirus-related deaths, or 21% of the 979,388 reported globally, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.

Pence also touched on two other hot-button issues when he talked about filling the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy created by the death Friday of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the violence that followed Wednesdays announcement that a Kentucky grand jury brought no charges against Louisville police for the killing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, in a March drug raid connected to a suspect who didnt live at Taylors home. Two officers were shot Wednesday in the protests that erupted in response to the news.

After calling Ginsburg a true public servant who paved the way for women in the law and noting that he paid his respects Wednesday evening as she lay in repose at the Supreme Court, Pence said Trump plans to exercise his constitutional right to nominate a principled conservative woman to the court on Saturday.

After the United States Senate fulfills their duty to advise and consent ... were gonna fill that seat, Pence said.

The rush to replace Ginsburg before the election has drawn protests from Democrats who say its hypocritical for the Republican-controlled senate to take that action now when four years ago the body refused to give a hearing to former Democratic President Barack Obama nominee Merrick Garland, who was nominated eight months before the election, with GOP senators then claiming that letting voters have a say in the choice through the election was the right thing to do.

Regarding the wounded officers, Pence said they are expected to recover.

Violence against law enforcement must stop and it must stop now, Pence said, adding that he and the president support the right to peacefully protest but believe there is no excuse for the rioting, looting and violence that has followed incidents this year such as the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, both at the hands of police.

Ill make you a promise, Wisconsin, Pence said. Under President Donald Trump and this vice president and this administration, we will always back the blue. Were not going to defund the police, not now, not ever.

Midwest Manufacturing employee Mike Stanton of Eau Claire said he was fortunate to be picked to be one of the workers permitted to attend the event and came away impressed.

I thought it was great, Stanton said of Pences 35-minute speech. Im a pretty hard-core conservative, so I agree with everything he said.

After the event, Pence boarded a bus heading for a Cops for Trump campaign event in Minneapolis.

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VP Pence talks up manufacturing in EC | Elections - Leader-Telegram