Romney: ‘I’d Fire David Plouffe’

ABC News’ Emily Friedman (@EmilyABC) reports:

In one of his harshest statements to date, presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that if he could, he’d fire President Obama’s senior advisor David Plouffe so he “could experience firsthand the pain of unemployment.”

Romney’s statement came after this morning’s release of the June jobs numbers, which showed the unemployment rate has increased from 9.1 to 9.2 percent, with employers adding just 18,000 jobs in June – a figure well below the 110,000 estimates made by economists. In May, 54,000 jobs were added.

“Today’s abysmal jobs report confirms what we all know – that President Obama has failed to get this economy moving again,” Romney wrote in his statement. “Just this week, President Obama’s closest White House adviser said that ‘unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers’ do not matter to the average American.”

Romney is referring to remarks made by Plouffe at a breakfast earlier this week during which he said, “The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers. People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’”

The remarks, according to Romney, are an “insult to the more than 20 million people who are out of work, underemployed or who have simply stopped looking for jobs.”

“With their cavalier attitude about the economy, the White House has turned the audacity of hope into the audacity of indifference.”