TRUMP CRASHOUT: Juking the stats
President Trump firing BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer is some authoritarian bullshit.
On August 1, 2025, President Donald Trump stared into an abyss of his creation and decided to take the rest of us into the dark with him. To deflect attention from deepening scrutiny that he might have been involved in improprieties during his longtime, intimate friendship with pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, Mr. Trump hoped to demonstrate competent economic stewardship. Instead, the July jobs report showed the American economy “sluggish” and “frozen”—not phrases one typically correlates to his promised “Golden Age“—only 73,000 jobs added, May and June revised down a combined 258,000 workers kicked to the curb, and unemployment up—directly attributable to Mr. Trump’s disastrous and erratic policies.
Concurrently, Mr. Trump’s global tariffs “kicked in”: 39% on Switzerland, 25% on India, 25%-ish on the EU, 35% on China and Canada, and then random-ass penalties on Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar—plus arbitrary numbers for almost every other country, too. And as has happened every fucking time he pushed this button, like a rat self-administering cocaine, the economy “crashed out.” The Dow went down 1.2%, the Nasdaq 2.2%, and the S&P 500 1.6%, the worst day since April 21. (April 21 was another freefall tied to the first lunatic (and possibly illegal) “Liberation Day” tariff negotiations and threats to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Friends in Brooklyn report that, like then, Wall Street guys were ordering well liquor from dive bars on Friday, and both their attitudes and tips were shit.
Following this feedback from the universe, a real leader, were he a man of wisdom and character, would study the numbers, question counterfactuals, evaluate his prior assumptions, and introspect. Not the orange clown, the Mandarin Mussolini who has so staked his narcissism on his bad ideas and protectionist fantasies that he rejects any fact disputing them as “rigged.” He hopes to bluster reality into changing so he does not have to re-evaluate his delusions. See also Psychology Today: 7 Reasons Narcissists Rarely Grow Emotionally.
Instead of reflecting on his miserable failure, that damned dotard fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, a Senate-confirmed economist with a long record of government service crunching numbers.
On Truth Social, Mr. Trump ranted:
“I was just informed that our Country’s ‘Jobs Numbers’ are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory.”
Ms. McEntarfer should sue for libel. The impropriety of accusing a government official of misconduct, impropriety, malfeasance, data falsification, fabrication, forgery, partisan sabotage, or other fraud and villainy should not be overlooked, even if America is now accustomed to and bored with the president’s constant bullshit.
“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.”
That “Biden Political Appointee” was confirmed by the majority of senators, including Mr. Trump’s Vice President, and, depending on how the Epstein affair goes, replacement, JD Vance.
“Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes. McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but … [t]he Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP’”
Strange to assert the economy is “BOOMING” as a refutation to statistics charting the downturn. Should we believe a man who still insists gasoline is $1.99 to know better, in his heart, than his own government’s numbers? What is the basis for this conviction that convinced him to “kill the messenger?” If he had other numbers to offer, he should have given them. Instead, he demands we trust his feelings over facts.
On HBO’s The Wire, Season 4, Episode 9, “Know Your Place,” Roland “Prezbo” Pryzbylewski calls this “juking the stats.” “Making robberies into larcenies. Making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and majors become colonels.” Mr. Trump must imagine that, if he can “juke the stats,” unemployed Americans will become suddenly employed. Or does he estimate that nobody on Wall Street, Main Street, or any other street knows their own pocketbook better than him?
“[D]espite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting ‘Kamala’ elected – How did that work out? Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should also be put ‘out to pasture.’”
Why is Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell “catching strays?” Mr. Trump neglected to mention that he has also called for interest rates to be cut further (an odd and improper request for an inflationary environment).
So, because the numbers are bad, the “books are cooked?” Nobody believes this was true, or else they would have offered to publish corrections.
Markets will not be steadied by the outbursts of this “stable genius” (read: unstable moron). Mr. Trump believes he can get the numbers he wants by punishing statisticians. “The economic destabilization will continue,” Mr. Trump is saying, “until the economists’ morale improves.”
Perhaps the president would have been better served explaining again that he thought Mr. Epstein’s real crime was “stealing the help.”