Faced with recent economic data showing that his tariff policies are hurting American jobs, President Donald Trump has been in a full-court press, trying to promote a conspiracy theory to explain away his failure. Trump took the conspiracy to another level on Tuesday, appearing on CNBC to share nonsense with a business-oriented audience.
Asked by conservative CNBC anchor Joe Kernen to justify his claim that the most recent jobs report had been “rigged,” Trump falsely claimed the system used to count jobs is “highly political.”
Trump incorrectly argued that revisions to unemployment reports that were released under former President Joe Biden proved that the last administration had rigged jobs numbers, and that a similar manipulation had occurred in the recent report. This is false. Jobs numbers have always been revised, and even William Beach, Trump’s former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has spoken out against his promotion of this conspiracy.
As Kernen mildly attempted to debunk his theorizing, Trump stuck to his guns.
“It’s a highly political situation. It’s totally rigged. Smart people know it. People with common sense know it. And a lot of people like to keep their head under the covers and just not believe it,” Trump said.
Trump’s CNBC appearance comes a day after he ranted online about Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts appearing on the network. In her appearance, Warren called out Trump for his weak economic performance, noting his tariffs have hiked the costs of many household staples, despite his promise during last year’s campaign cycle to cut costs if elected.
Trump’s decision to call in to the same network was a clear attempt to rebut Warren, whose claims are backed by reality—unlike Trump’s.
When he hasn’t been pushing conspiracies about the jobs report, Trump has been promising to increase tariffs on prescription drug imports, described Swiss Confederation President Karin Keller-Sutter as “the woman,” whined that she wouldn’t do as he told her, and made a racist argument about immigrants.
Referring to undocumented farm workers, Trump said, “People that live in the inner city are not doing that work. … They’ve tried, we’ve tried, everybody tries. They don’t do it.”
“These people do it naturally. Naturally. I said, ‘What happens if they get it?’ to a farmer the other day—‘What happens if they get a bad back?’ He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die,’” he added.
Trump, of course, has a long history of racism. And on top of that, his economic policies are failing, in the same pattern that both experts and leaders like former Vice President Kamala Harris said they would. Instead of changing course, Trump is promoting yet another conspiracy theory and pushing it to every media venue willing to listen.