In rejecting the jobs report, Trump follows his own playbook of
discrediting unfavorable data
[August 05, 2025]
By JOSH BOAK
WASHINGTON (AP) — When the coronavirus surged during President Donald
Trump’s first term, he called for a simple fix: Limit the amount of
testing so the deadly outbreak looked less severe. When he lost the 2020
election, he had a ready-made reason: The vote count was fraudulent.
And on Friday, when the July jobs report revisions showed a distressed
economy, Trump had an answer: He fired the official in charge of the
data and called the report of a sharp slowdown in hiring “phony.”
Trump has a go-to playbook if the numbers reveal uncomfortable
realities, and that’s to discredit or conceal the figures and to attack
the messenger — all of which can hurt the president's efforts to
convince the world that America is getting stronger.
“Our democratic system and the strength of our private economy depend on
the honest flow of information about our economy, our government and our
society,” said Douglas Elmendorf, a Harvard University professor who was
formerly director of the Congressional Budget Office. “The Trump
administration is trying to suppress honest analysis.”
The president's strategy carries significant risks for his own
administration and a broader economy that depends on politics-free data.
His denouncements threaten to lower trust in government and erode public
accountability, and any manipulation of federal data could result in
policy choices made on faulty numbers, causing larger problems for both
the president and the country.
The White House disputes any claims that Trump wants to hide numbers
that undermine his preferred narratives. It emphasized that Goldman
Sachs found that the two-month revisions on the jobs report were the
largest since 1968, outside of a recession, and that should be a source
of concern regarding the integrity of the data. Trump's aides say their
fundamental focus is ensuring that any data gives an accurate view of
reality.
Not the first time Trump has sought to play with numbers
Trump has a long history of dismissing data when it reflects poorly on
him and extolling or even fabricating more favorable numbers, a pattern
that includes his net worth, his family business, election results and
government figures:
— Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in a lawsuit brought by the state of New
York that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by
massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on
paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.
— Trump has claimed that the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections were
each rigged. Trump won the 2016 presidential election by clinching the
Electoral College, but he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, a
sore spot that led him to falsely claim that millions of immigrants
living in the country illegally had cast ballots. He lost the 2020
election to Joe Biden but falsely claimed he had won it, despite
multiple lawsuits failing to prove his case.
— In 2019, as Hurricane Dorian neared the East Coast, Trump warned
Alabama that the storm was coming its way. Forecasters pushed back,
saying Alabama was not at risk. Trump later displayed a map in the Oval
Office that had been altered with a black Sharpie — his signature pen —
to include Alabama in the potential path of the storm.
— Trump's administration has stopped posting reports on climate change,
canceled studies on vaccine access and removed data on gender identity
from government sites.
— As pandemic deaths mounted, Trump suggested that there should be less
testing. “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more
people,” Trump said at a June 2020 rally in Oklahoma. “You’re going to
find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down,
please.’”
While Trump's actions have drawn outcry from economists, scientists and
public interest groups, Elmendorf noted that Trump's actions regarding
economic data could be tempered by Congress, which could put limits on
Trump by whom he chooses to lead federal agencies, for example.
“Outside observers can only do so much," Elmendorf said. “The power to
push back against the president rests with the Congress. They have not
exercised that power, but they could.”
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President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding Air
Force One at Lehigh Valley International Airport, Sunday, Aug. 3,
2025, in Allentown, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
White House says having its own people in place will make data
'more reliable’
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic
Council, took aim at the size of the downward revisions in the jobs
report (a combined 258,000 reduction in May and June) to suggest
that the report had credibility issues. He said Trump is focused on
getting dependable numbers, despite the president linking the issue
to politics by claiming the revisions were meant to make Republicans
look bad.
“The president wants his own people there so that when we see the
numbers, they’re more transparent and more reliable,” Hassett said
Sunday on NBC News.
Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for
International Economics who oversaw the Census Bureau and Bureau of
Economic Analysis during the Biden administration, stressed that
revisions to the jobs data are standard. That's because the numbers
are published monthly, but not all surveys used are returned quickly
enough to be in the initial publishing of the jobs report.
“Revisions solve the tension between timeliness and accuracy,” Kolko
said. “We want timely data because policymakers and businesses and
investors need to make decisions with the best data that's
available, but we also want accuracy.”
Kolko stressed the importance in ensuring that federal statistics
are trustworthy not just for government policymakers but for the
companies trying to gauge the overall direction of the economy when
making hiring and investment choices.
“Businesses are less likely to make investments if they can't trust
data about how the economy is doing,” he said.
Not every part of the jobs report was deemed suspect by the Trump
administration.
Before Trump ordered the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, the White House rapid response
social media account reposted a statement by Vice President JD Vance
noting that native-born citizens were getting jobs and immigrants
were not, drawing from data in the household tables in the jobs
report.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer also trumpeted the findings on
native-born citizens, noting on Fox Business Network's “Varney &
Co.” that they are accounting "for all of the job growth, and that’s
key.”
During his first run for the presidency, Trump criticized the
economic data as being fake only to fully embrace the positive
numbers shortly after he first entered the White House in 2017.
White House says transparency is a value
The challenge of reliable data goes beyond economic figures to basic
information on climate change and scientific research.
In July, taxpayer-funded reports on the problems climate change is
creating for America and its population disappeared from government
websites. The White House initially said NASA would post the reports
in compliance with a 1990 law, but the agency later said it would
not because any legal obligations were already met by having reports
submitted to Congress.
The White House maintains that it has operated with complete
openness, posting a picture of Trump on Monday on social media with
the caption, “The Most Transparent President in History.”
In the picture, Trump had his back to the camera and was covered in
shadows, visibly blocking out most of the light in front of him.
___
Associated Press writer Michelle Price in Washington contributed to
this report.
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