Donald Trump Tries to Spin and Purge His Way to Declaring Economic Victory
It was a move so comically autocratic that Recep Erdogan of Turkey already did it in 2022.
According to former senior Trump administration officials, during his first term in office, the president would repeatedly complain to his aides that he should just fire the government officials who contradicted him by publicly promoting facts and data that were politically inconvenient to him. He was frequently paranoid about federal bureaucrats and other personnel trying to make him look bad. Things only got worse as the 2020 presidential election neared, when he and his White House embarked on frenzied cover-ups and propaganda campaigns, such as pressuring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to dial down the ballooning Covid-19 body count.
In the opening months of his second presidency, Trump still has a ton to cover up or to try to talk his way out of — and he's surrounded by a team of overzealous sycophants who want to assist him in propping up his authoritarian fantasies in ways that some of his first-term appointees squeamishly, if only occasionally, resisted.
In poll after poll in recent months, the American public has been screaming at the Trump administration that his policies have not improved, or have actually hurt, their day-to-day lives. The key issue that put Trump back in the White House — a brutal economy reflecting the aftershocks of the coronavirus pandemic, an end to aid programs, and the increasingly punishing state of American capitalism — is still putting many millions of Americans through hell. That economy now belongs to the sitting president, who keeps throttling it with his chaos-driven tariff regime. And the voters have noticed.
According to a new survey from University of Massachusetts Amherst, Trump's poll numbers have fallen through the floor. The survey puts his approval rating at 38 percent, with 58 percent disapproving. Less than two thirds of respondents said Trump has handled inflation or tariffs well; 37 percent of people said he's handled jobs well, though that was before a weak jobs report. Trump's numbers with independents are exceptionally poor: 21 percent approval, with 17 percent saying he's handling inflation well.
'With inflation remaining a persistent problem, a weakening job market, and tariffs causing economic upheaval in the stock market and corporate boardrooms, it is no surprise that majorities of Americans believe that President Trump has done a poor job in handling inflation, jobs, and tariffs since taking office for a second time,' says UMass Poll Director Tatishe Nteta. He adds that 'time will tell whether his efforts to pass the buck will alter the public's perceptions of Trump's economic performance or if Americans will continue to believe that the buck stops with President Trump.'
But in the same way that this president figured he could bomb and shit-post his way to peace in the Middle East, Trump still thinks that he can spin the media and purge his government all the way to declaring economic victory, no matter what the economic data and Americans say.
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the job market is stagnating, showing weak numbers for July as it revised down previous job growth estimates for May and June.
Asked on Friday to comment, albeit anonymously, on the just-released jobs report, one senior Trump administration official simply replied to Rolling Stone: 'Shitty.' They declined to elaborate further.
To several of the president's advisers, the problem with the jobs report was that it showed the economy is not exactly 'HOT,' as Trump often claims to the American people. Trump saw it differently. He lashed out, claiming that 'today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,' and publicly announced the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics.
Prior to the president's outburst online, Vice President, J.D. Vance was citing the BLS data as evidence of Trump's economic splendor.
By that point, Trump administration officials and communications hands across the federal government had been working on press releases and talking points for their principals to try to spin the latest jobs report data to make it sound like things are still on the right track — and that Trumponomics is working.
As soon as Trump posted his social-media rant announcing the sacking of the BLS official, those drafts were immediately junked, or at least seriously revised to incorporate the president's baseless 'rigged' claims, two administration appointees say.
In the hours before Trump announced McEntarfer's firing, Stephen Moore, an informal economic adviser to Trump, was blunt, telling Rolling Stone that when it came to 'the lousy jobs numbers, a lot of that are residual effects of the tariffs. Everybody was very uncertain about how this was all headed, and those tariffs caused a lot of havoc.'
Moore says that while he's 'still pretty bullish going forward' due to the president and the GOP getting 'the tax bill done' and the recent 'series of trade deals,' the Trump ally says that 'I think now would be a good time to stop talking about new tariffs.'
'Sometimes Trump can't stand prosperity,' he adds. 'Whenever things start to go really well like with the stock market, he announces another round of tariffs like he did yesterday… My advice to Trump is to stop with the tariffs. We don't need tariffs right now… When I see him, he knows my position; every time he sees me, he says: 'There's Steve Moore! He doesn't like tariffs!' This will hopefully get the administration to back off of the tariffs.'
But if this past week is any indication, Trump isn't done causing economic chaos. Instead, Trump and his government are going to prioritize suppressing bad news and uncomfortable economic data.
'BLS Has Lengthy History of Inaccuracies, Incompetence,' the Trump White House insisted on Friday evening, in an email blast to the media. 'A lengthy history of inaccuracies and incompetence by Erika McEntarfer, the former Biden-appointed Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has completely eroded public trust in the government agency charged with disseminating key data used by policymakers and businesses to make consequential decisions.'
As Trump was leaving the White House Friday evening, a reporter asked the president why anyone should trust his administration's monthly jobs reports going forward.
'You're right,' Trump said. 'Why should anybody trust numbers?'
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