On the first Friday of the month, Americans get to see new job and unemployment numbers, but presidents don’t have to wait quite that long: They get an advance look. It’s just a perk of the job.
This week, with roughly two hours before the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest jobs data, Donald Trump published a rather furious missive to his social media platform, calling his own handpicked Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, “a stubborn MORON.” The president went on to suggest the Fed’s board “should assume control” of the entire institution unless Powell agrees to “substantially lower interest rates, NOW.”
The Republican added that the Fed’s board members must be prepared to “DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!”
It was, to be sure, a rather unhinged tantrum, but it was also a pretty big hint: Trump had seen the job numbers, and he wasn’t pleased.
The public soon learned that the job totals were quite awful, and over the first seven months of the year, job growth in the United States slowed to a 16-year low (not including the totals from the pandemic in 2020). The president obviously had reason to be disappointed — he keeps telling people how “hot” the economy is, and reality keeps getting in the way — but he has no one to blame but himself: It’s his own agenda that’s done so much damage to the job market.
Confronted with evidence of his own failure, Trump announced that he’s changing course and pursuing a more responsible economic direction.
No, I’m just kidding. He’s actually firing the commissioner of labor statistics. NBC News reported:
President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after a stunning government report showed that hiring had slowed down significantly over the past three months. Taking to Truth Social, he attacked Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS. He claimed that the country’s jobs reports ‘are being produced by Biden appointee’ and ordered his administration to terminate her.
An administration official told NBC News shortly after the post appeared that McEntarfer had indeed been fired.
In a long, bonkers-even-by-Trump-standards online message, the Republican claimed that he was “just informed” that the commissioner is “a Biden appointee.”
Trump, without a shred of evidence or shame, proceeded to claim that McEntarfer had secretly conspired against him during the 2024 campaign — a bizarre claim, given that the job totals in the months leading up to Election Day really weren’t great — before flubbing basic facts about Labor Department reports that anyone in an Economics 101 course would recognize as absurd.
It was at this point that Trump added, “We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”
The irony was rich. The president concluded, “The Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP,’” overlooking the inconvenient fact that Americans are dealing with sluggish growth, stubborn inflation, an anemic job market and a slumping manufacturing sector. For now, I’m not going to dwell on the fact that McEntarfer is a respected, highly qualified career civil servant who’s done nothing wrong and who deserves better than to be fired and smeared with conspiratorial garbage. Instead, I’m going to dwell on how dangerous Trump’s latest move is. Trump, in true authoritarian fashion, fired the labor statistics chief for doing her job and telling the truth — which the president didn’t want to hear. He’ll now seek out someone new who’ll deliver job statistics that make him happy, knowing full well that McEntarfer’s successor must understand that failure to satisfy Trump will lead to their ouster, too. The result will be an untenable dynamic: No one — from business owners to investors, economists to financiers — will be able to have confidence in the U.S. employment statistics. Everyone has been able to trust this data for generations, and Trump, frustrated by his own failures, has decided to set that trust on fire. The harm to the credibility of government data in general, and to the Labor Department in particular, is incalculable. This isn’t how Americans govern; it’s how despots rule.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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