Neoconservative writer Bill Kristol says President Donald Trump’s firing of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics over her department’s accurately reported numbers was moving the U.S. into “third world” territory.
“My alarm scale is pretty high,” Kristol told podcaster Tim Miller. “It’s been pretty high for quite a while, but it’s ticking higher.”
The furious president fired Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a dismal June jobs report showing only 73,000 new jobs added and downward revisions of more than 250,000 for April and May.
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“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,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “… The Economy is BOOMING under “TRUMP.”
Kristol said past presidents often spun bad numbers with claims that ‘it’s complicated” or “these adjustments are a little bigger than usual.”
“That would’ve been a normal political reaction,” Kristol said. “But spin is not OK anymore. I guess we just have to have pure propaganda. You can’t report the facts if they run counter to the narrative of America First, that everything is fantastic, everything that Trump does has instantaneously great results and there will never be another disappointment or a down month in the economy as long as Trump is president.”
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“The numbers weren’t even outright recessionary,” added Kristol, but now Trump has amplified them to shake confidence in everything now coming out of the administration.
Miller called the firing a “don’t believe your lying eyes-authoritarian creep” and agreed that McEntarfer lost her job “because she reported the facts.” This will signal that nobody will now be able to take as truth any “facts” coming from the administration, whether it’s economic numbers or the details of a hurricane.
“The economy is based on trust and the belief that institutions will pay their bills, that the numbers they report will be accurate and there will not be a corrupt scheme that hyperinflates or deflates the value of the dollar,” said Miller. “This is the reason the U.S. has the world’s reserve currency, why the U.S. is still la trusted world harbor for investment for people around the world It is because our institutions are strong and legitimate. If you delegitimize our institutions that puts you on a path of having an economy that looks like Argentina.
Miller asked why anybody would invest in the U.S. if they suspect the government is going to put out “fake numbers to please the despot.”
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And it is to please the despot, said Kristol. The abrupt nature of the firing proved that.
“They want the intimidation. They want the sense that the whole government works for Donald Trump,” Kristol said, adding that the all caps “Trump” in Trump’s Truth Social post was “revealing.”
Hear the Bulwark podcast at this link.