It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, August 04, 2025
Suck up's: Elizabeth Warren comes out swinging as former allies court billionaires
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaking with attendees at the Clark County Democratic Party's 2020 Kick Off to Caucus Gala at the Tropicana Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
Zohran Mamdani crushed the Democratic establishment to become NYC's mayoral nominee, winning the primary by focusing on the affordability crisis faced by many New York residents. But his grassroots victory has sent shockwaves through the billionaire class — and two so-called Democrats are busy sucking up to them instead of listening to the people, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) blasted on Monday.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman called on former Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo—now an independent opponent of Mamdani's—to step aside from the New York City mayoral race and allow incumbent Eric Adams—also now running as in independent—to take on democratic socialist Mamdani in November.
The hedge fund mogul has reportedly promised to spend "hundreds of millions of dollars" to defeat the working-class champion, Warren wrote.
"You don’t have to look very hard to see just how out of touch with working people and the mainstream values of the Democratic Party Adams and Cuomo have become," she wrote in a Rolling Stone column.
"Adams withdrew from the primary early on, and Cuomo felt so entitled to the nomination that he barely bothered to campaign. But they’ve both gotten the memo from their wealthy backers to step it up."
Why are Wall Street titans so terrified, she asked? Because Mamdani threatens their stranglehold on the city. While Adams switched to independent in April a few months after federal corruption charges were dismissed, and Cuomo is pursuing a political comeback after he resigned as governor in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, Mamdani represents something they can't buy: authentic populist rage, Warren wrote.
The 33-year-old democratic socialist has outlined radical plans to build 200,000 affordable housing units, implement rent control, and provide universal childcare. His promise to tax the ultra-rich and giant corporations to fund these initiatives has the billionaire donor class in full panic mode.
Real estate developers such as RXR Realty, Two Trees and Vornado ponied up checks in the $150,000 to $250,000 range to stop Mamdani during the primary. Cuomo's donors include Laurie Tisch, a billionaire philanthropist among others flooding money into the race.
The message is crystal clear: when working families finally get a champion willing to take on corporate power, the billionaires unleash their war chests, Warren wrote.
"Mamdani has charged ahead with plans to make New York more affordable, and he’s showing how to pay for it by taxing the ultra-rich and giant corporations," the senator wrote.
"That may not make him popular with the richest New Yorkers, but he’s willing to let Adams and Cuomo suck up to those guys. Mamdani is fighting to make New York work for working people."
'Pathetic excuse': Charlie Kirk hammered over attempt at Christian rebrand
Charlie Kirk speaking with attendees at the 2021 Southwest Regional Conference hosted by Turning Point USA at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona.
(Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
Charlie Kirk, the MAGA influencer and head of the right-wing youth group Turning Point USA, has undergone a seismic shift in his branding in recent years, going from a pro-market ideologue to a Christian nationalist who supports theocratic takeover of the state, Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon — and it's no accident.
Specifically, she argued, he has made this transformation to create a permission structure for hardcore racism — as demonstrated by the fact that one of his idols is a recently-deceased religious figure who endorsed slavery.
"Kirk, who wanted to seem like a young and 'hip' Republican when he started out, claimed in 2016 to have a 'secular worldview.' Two years later, he criticized older Republicans for ignoring the 'separation of church and state.' His organization ... cited their values as 'fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government,'" wrote Marcotte. However, these days his rhetoric is infused with Christian supremacy and, "By 2022, he was falsely claiming the separation of church and state is 'a fabrication' made up by 'secular humanists.' (In fact, it was 'made up' by Thomas Jefferson.)"
Indeed, she noted, he appears to be the latest right-wing figure pushing the New Apostolic Reformation's so-called "Seven Mountain Mandate" — the belief that Christians, or at least right-wing Christians, must achieve dominance in the seven pillars of culture: religion, family, education, government, media, business and the arts.
To understand why Kirk has shifted his rhetoric so profoundly, Marcotte argued, look to his mourning of evangelical pastor John MacArthur, who died last month.
"Kirk called him 'one of the most influential Protestant minds since the Reformation,' and a 'legend' who 'never bowed to the gods of this age' and 'never apologized for Scripture.' Soaring language — but it’s a euphemism. One of MacArthur’s most famous old-fashioned beliefs was that slavery was godly," wrote Marcotte.
MacArthur proclaimed Black people were cursed by God to be "servile," and that while some slaveowners committed abuses, “working for a gentle, caring, loving master was the best of all possible worlds.” A Black man being obedient to his master was no different from a white man being obedient to Jesus, he claimed.
In reality, Marcotte argued, Kirk was just delighted to find a religious outlet for his racism. "Kirk routinely expresses his own racist views. He suggested Black pilots are unqualified. He blamed a Black fire chief in Austin, Texas, for flooding deaths that occurred a three-hour drive away from the city. He denounced the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act and tried to discredit the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as 'awful' and 'not a good person.'"
This kind of rhetoric "has long held this appeal for a simple reason: It puts an ennobling gloss on ugly feelings," Marcotte concluded. "It dresses up bigotry as if it were about faith and philosophy, instead of cruelty. It’s also about escaping responsibility. Since the racist cannot justify their views rationally, instead they blame God, who is conveniently never around to answer questions. It’s a pathetic excuse for small-minded people."
"No wonder Charlie Kirk embraced it so wholeheartedly," she added.
'That might be your way to try to twist my words': Trump EPA head snaps at CNN host
Donald Trump's head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) got snippy with CNN's Kasie Hunt on Sunday morning when she tried to get a clarification from him.
During his appearance on "State of the Union," Lee Zeldin, a former GOP lawmaker who failed in his bid to become governor of New York, was pressed by Hunt who asked him about the policy changes he is making since taking over.
"The Supreme Court ruled in overturning the Chevron doctrine in West Virginia versus EPA, Michigan versus EPA, that agencies like the EPA can't just use vague language in statute and try to make it be whatever we want it to be," he told the host. "The major policy doctrine also says that when you're going to reach something like an endangerment finding and then have trillions of dollars of regulation, that's something that should be decided by our elected members of Congress and passing statute."
Saying previous officials made "a lot of mental leaps," he added, "They say carbon dioxide when mixed with a whole bunch of other, well, mixed gases, in some cases not even admitted for mobile sources, they say that that contributes to global climate change, Doesn't say causes, contributes how much? They don't say, but it's north of zero –– not much more than zero. "
"So you're sounding pretty skeptical of this overall scientific consensus that these greenhouse gas emissions are the overwhelming man-made climate change driver," Hunt asked.
"That might be your way to try to twist my words," the Republican fired back. "But what I'm saying is that we get our power at EPA from what the law states and the Supreme Court in recent cases have been very clear."
"So what I was just describing, with all the mental leaps used in the 2009 endangerment finding, Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, doesn't allow all of these different mental leaps as the Supreme Court made clear in recent years," Zeldin insisted. "So I'm not going to get creative with the law. We're going to read the plain language and if Section 202 of the Clean Air Act gets amended by Congress, then we'll follow that new law."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough knocked down President Donald Trump's justification for firing a labor statistician after the latest jobs report showed an economic slowdown.
The president abruptly fired Erika McEntarfer as commissioner of labor statistics Friday, hours after the agency reported job growth in the U.S. had slowed to a near-halt. He claimed the Joe Biden appointee had cooked the books in favor of the Democratic administration ahead of last year's election, only to say those numbers were wrong after votes were cast.
"The more he talks about it, the more he just proves how wrong it was to fire this woman," the "Morning Joe" host said. "First of all, he just said all the numbers leading up to this report were positive. He always praised her numbers. If he's going to blame this on her instead of actually data, it wasn't her."
Trump has long praised McEntarfer for her work, and Scarborough said his claim about her job numbers before the 2024 election misrepresented the facts.
"He keeps going back to this, this line about, 'Oh, they put out a blockbuster report right before the election' – no, they didn't," Scarborough said. "That's just not true. I mean, from the reports I saw, it was actually tepid and weak right before the election. So again, I know, I know, facts don't matter in this case. But, again, it seems as far as fluctuations go, and that always happens, that has always happened. It always will happen, as far as the numbers being revised the next month or two."
"The numbers are revised not because of any political bias, and not because of any political bias over the past two decades," he added, "but because of employers not participating as much and it taking another month to get more details and pulling it out of the employers, and then they revise it a month later. So, again, on all of these points, they just don't hold any water."
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 3, 2025. REUTERS/Aaron Schwartz
Donald Trump's shock dismissal of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer over disappointing jobs numbers has experts warning that the 'irked' president's knee-jerk reaction may have spiraled America's economy into a chaos that could last decades.
The firing came after July's dismal jobs report showed only 73,000 new positions created, with previous months revised downward by a staggering 258,000 jobs—numbers that directly contradicted Trump's grandiose claims of a new "golden age."
"BLS is the finest statistical agency in the entire world. Its numbers are trusted all over the world," former BLS Commissioner William Beach told CNN's "State of the Union." Beach warned that "the president's attack on the commissioner and on the bureau is undermining that infrastructure, could undermine that trust over the long term."
He went on, "One big danger now is that Trump’s economic fabulism will gather its own momentum and infect confidence in government statistics that will long outlive his presidency.
"Employment data is published as part of a multilayered process that would be almost impossible for one official to corrupt. But if Trump appoints a politicized official to head the BLS with an incentive to please him, the pressure on officials to produce corrupted data would be intense. If jobs numbers are worse next month, will he fire someone else? And if the numbers improve, will anyone believe in their integrity?"
Trump's cronies scrambled to defend the firing on Sunday's talk shows. White House Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett declared that "the president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable."
The move represents Trump's latest assault on independent institutions, following his pattern of attacking anyone who dares present facts that contradict his alternate reality. As one expert noted, Trump's behavior mirrors that of "populist authoritarian strongmen leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan."
This isn't Trump's first rodeo with reality denial, Collinson wrote. During his presidency, he infamously told supporters, "Just remember, what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening"—a mantra that guided his COVID-19 response and culminated in his "Big Lie" about the 2020 election.
The economic implications are severe. When countries politicize official data, they "risk ending up like Argentina or Greece, where the invention of rosy statistics masked economic malaise and sparked financial crises," Collinson wrote.
Trump's second term has devolved into what observers call an "Orwellian" exercise in rewriting reality.
"Suppose that they get a new commissioner," Beach warned, "and they do a bad number. Well, everybody's going to think, 'Well, it's not as bad as it probably really is,' because they're going to suspect political influence."
America's economic credibility—built over generations—now hangs in the balance, Collinson concluded.
Trump furious after uproar over job numbers firing: 'Rigged just like' 2020 election
U.S. President Donald Trump reacts after disembarking Marine One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., June 6, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
President Donald Trump scrambled to defend himself after firing Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) administrator Erika McEntarfer over a poor jobs report.
"Last weeks Job’s Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged," Trump insisted Monday in a punctuation-challenged post on Truth Social. "That’s why, in both cases, there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats."
"Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!!" he added. "I will pick an exceptional replacement. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAGA!"
Last weeks Job’s Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged. That’s why, in both cases, there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats. Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!! I will pick an exceptional replacement. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAGA!
'No Pocahontas!' Trump loses it as Elizabeth Warren destroys him on CNBC
Donald Trump on the campaign trail in Las Vegas, Nevada
REUTERS/David Becker
President Donald Trump lashed out at Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as she slammed him in a CNBC interview for firing Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) administrator Erika McEntarfer over a poor jobs report.
"Well, look, you know, you get bad data, you kill the messenger, right?" Warren told CNBC on Monday. "And that's Donald Trump because he thinks he can bend reality. If he can just tell a different story, then everyone will have to believe his story."
"I think most people have not absorbed just how dangerous it is, both to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and also, then what, to put in some sycophant who's going to give data that makes the president happy?" she continued. "So he's got some toady suck-up in there, and a month from now, let's just say good data come out. How many people have to discount that data and say, not really?"
Moments later, Trump raged about Warren's appearance on CNBC in a series of posts on Truth Social.
"Elizabeth Warren is a LOSER! She lies about everything, including the fact that she is an Indian. She's NOT. She's no Pocahontas!!!" the president exclaimed. "Ask Pocahontas the real questions, CNBC!!!"
The Trump administration declined to provide a guest to ABC News after the leader of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was fired over a poor jobs report.
On Sunday, This Week host George Stephanopoulos revealed that ABC had contacted the White House after President Donald Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
"After the president fired the head of the BLS on Friday, we invited the White House to provide a guest to respond," the host explained. "They declined."
Instead, Stephanopoulos spoke to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers about the BLS shakeup.
"I mean, this is way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did," Summers remarked. "I'm surprised that other officials have not responded by resigning themselves, as took place when Richard Nixon fired people lawlessly. This is a preposterous charge."
"These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals," he continued. "There's no conceivable way that the head of the BLS could have manipulated this number."
"This is the stuff of — democracy is giving way to authoritarianism. Firing statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers. It goes with launching assaults on universities. It goes with launching assaults on law firms."
'This Is Damaging': Former BLS Chief Slams Trump Firing of McEntarfer Over Weak Jobs Report
"Authoritarians always try to control and dominate the information landscape to undermine opposition to their harmful policies," said the head of one consumer watchdog group.
Former commissioner William Beach, appointed by Trump during his first term, is now speaking out over the president's firing of his successor, Erika McEntarfer. (Photo: CNN/screengrab)
The former head of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics has joined those speaking out loudly against President Donald Trump's weekend firing of BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, who was dismissed after a jobs report released Friday showed the economy taking on water under Trump's leadership.
In an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, William Beach, who was nominated by Trump during his first term and ran the nonpartisan BLS directly before McEntarfer, defended the agency's independence and argued that Trump's firing will do lasting damage to the trust placed in the bureau. The firing, he argued, could have severe consequences for the national economy and wider negative reverberations.
"I don't think there's any grounds at all for this firing. And it really hurts the statistical system," said Beach. "It undermines credibility... This is damaging."
Pressed by CNN's anchor to address unsubstantiated claims by Trump that McEntarfer somehow "rigged" the numbers that resulted in the poor jobs report, Beach said that was impossible.
"There's no way for that to happen," explained Beach. "The commissioner doesn't do anything to collect the numbers. The commissioner doesn't see the numbers until Wednesday before they're published. By the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they are all prepared; they're locked into the computer system."
On Friday, following the initial public comments by Trump, Beach was among the signatories of a statement issued by the Friends of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an independent group of outside organizations dedicated to economic statistics and analysis that supports the mission of the BLS.
The statement—signed by the Friends of the BLS co-chairs, of whom Beach is one, and members of its steering committee—states that the "baseless, damaging claim" about McEntarfer made by Trump "undermines the valuable work and dedication of BLS staff who produce the reports each month" and "escalates the President's unprecedented attacks on the independence and integrity of the federal statistical system."
And continues: The President seeks to blame someone for unwelcome economic news. The Commissioner does not determine what the numbers are but simply reports on what the data show. The process of obtaining the numbers is decentralized by design to avoid opportunities for interference. The BLS uses the same proven, transparent, reliable process to produce estimates every month. Every month, BLS revises the prior two months’ employment estimates to reflect slower-arriving, more-accurate information.
This rationale for firing Dr. McEntarfer is without merit and undermines the credibility of federal economic statistics that are a cornerstone of intelligent economic decision-making by businesses, families, and policymakers. U.S. official statistics are the gold standard globally. When leaders of other nations have politicized economic data, it has destroyed public trust in all official statistics and in government science.
The statement says Trump's politicization of BLS data is a great disservice to the agency and its workers as well as the "entire federal statistical system which this country has relied on for almost 150 years." The group called for a congressional inquiry into McEntarfer's firing by Trump.
Friday's job report sparked headlines nationwide questioning the strength of the labor market and the economy overall, under Trump's leadership.
"America's remarkably resilient labor market was a mirage," Axios reported on Friday, for example. "Hiring came to a screeching halt in the last few months, suggesting more underlying economic weakness than it seemed."
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, was among those who slammed Trump for his Orwellian behavior in the wake of a bad jobs report that many economists predicted was on its way due to the president's misguided trade policies and giveaways to the rich at the expense of working people.
"Trump has made a career of calling up down, and calling the truth a lie," said Weissman in a Friday statement. "But the threat to the integrity of the Bureau of Labor Statistics—the trusted source of objective, factual information about the state of the economy—is a Newspeak project of a whole other level and will undermine not just public understanding but evidence-based policymaking altogether."
While "profoundly troubling," Weissman said nobody should be surprised by what Trump has done.
"Authoritarians always try to control and dominate the information landscape to undermine opposition to their harmful policies," he said. "Yet again, to advance his narrow, personal, and political interests, Donald Trump is undermining the interests of the United States and leaving us a weaker and more vulnerable nation."
'Kill the messenger': Trump ripped over 'dangerous and corrupt' firing of labor stats head
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
A furious President Donald Trumphas fired the Commissioner of Labor Statistics following a dismal June jobs report that showed only 73,000 new jobs added and downward revisions of more than 250,000 for April and May.
“I was just informed that our Country’s ‘Jobs Numbers’ are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer,” Trump wrote in a social media post, baselessly accusing her of having “faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is an independent statistical agency and part of the U.S. Department of Labor.
Claiming that the Bureau had “overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000,” Trump wrote: “These were Records — No one can be that wrong?”
“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” he vowed. “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, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months,” he noted.
Trump then also called for the termination of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, despite having claimed he does not plan to fire him before his term ends next year.
“The Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP’ despite 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.’ Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Democracy Docket reported that McEntarfer’s “firing raises the threat of political interference in U.S. economic data, which economists warn would undermine confidence in the economy.”
The media outlet called her dismissal “part of Trump’s ongoing efforts to take control of traditionally independent federal agencies, and to use them for political gain.”
Critics blasted the move.
“Unquestionably the most dangerous and corrupt attack on the independence of US economic data in American history,” wrote Joey Politano, who writes the economics Substack Apricitas Economics. “Trump is firing the head of the BLS, [a] longtime civil servant confirmed 86-8 by the Senate, simply because the job numbers came in below his expectations today.”
Arin Dube, Provost Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, issued this warning:
“Firing the Commissioner of Labor Statistics when the BLS revises jobs numbers down (as it routinely does) threatens to destroy trust in core American institutions, and all government statistics. I can’t stress how damaging this is.”
Journalist and author Charles Fishman noted, “Trump doesn’t like Friday’s official job statistics. Trump fires career labor economist who is Commissioner of Labor Statistics. This is what authoritarianism looks like. Don’t like reality? Fire the person, insist on a new reality. Completely undermines trust in gov’t data.”
Journalist Brian J. Karem wrote: “Remember the part about ‘shooting the messenger’? This is a real Third World, Russian or North Korean propaganda move. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen Don. You don’t get to burn down the house.”
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) declared, “Breaking: Kill the messenger.”
'Obsessed with propaganda': How Trump's 'temper tantrum' firing of BLS chief may backfire
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during the White House Faith Office Luncheon at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 14, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
In a Friday essay for the Atlantic, columnist Jonathan Chait wrote that Trump's sacking of BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer over a less-than-flattering jobs report gives Americans a distinct window into how the second Trump administration governs. Chait wrote that Trump's firing of McEntarfer was an emotionally driven "lizard brain" decision after the July 2025 jobs report showed not only sluggish job growth of just 73,000 new jobs added, but a downward revision of previous jobs numbers by 258,000 — the worst period of job growth since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Chait wrote that Trump's reasoning that bureaucrats were scheming to undermine falls apart upon closer inspection.
"Revisions of past numbers are a normal part of BLS methodology. Every monthly report is a projection based on limited information, so the Bureau continues to update its findings," he explained. "Last August, the BLS revised previous months’ job numbers downward. This was obviously a bad thing for the Biden administration, but Republicans decided that it was in fact evidence that the BLS had been cooking the books to make the economy look good."
According to Chait, McEntarfer's sudden firing can also shed light on Trump's ongoing feud with Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell over Powell's refusal to lower interest rates. He argued that, similar to how Trump lacks an understanding of how the BLS routinely adjusts data, he also fails to grasp why interest rates are lowered in the first place.
The Atlantic columnist pointed out that the Fed typically only lowers interest rates when the economy is struggling, in order to stimulate more economic activity. And when the economy is strong, the Fed keeps interest rates higher as a means of preventing the economy from overheating and causing inflation to spike. After breaking that down, he likened Trump's frustration with Powell as claiming that the economy is stronger than it actually is, while pushing Powell to do things that suggest the economy is weaker than it actually is.
"He is obsessed with propaganda, and has had phenomenal success manipulating the media and bullying his party into repeating even his most fantastical lies," Chait wrote. "But, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris learned the hard way, voters don’t judge the economy on the basis of jobs reports. They judge it on the basis of how they and their community are doing. You can’t fool the public into thinking the economy is better than it is with fake numbers. All fake numbers can do is make it harder for policy makers to steer the economy."
"The president’s mad rush to subject the macroeconomic policy makers to the same partisan discipline he has imposed on the power ministries is less of a coup than a temper tantrum," he added. "He thinks he wants loyalists and hacks running those functions. He might not like what happens when he gets his way."
Click here to read Chait's full column in the Atlantic (subscription required).
One of the foremost economists in the U.S. is now sounding the alarm over President Donald Trump's decision to fire the head of the United States' premier economic data institution over an unflattering jobs report.
In a Friday interview with MSNBC host Ari Melber, Paul Krugman — the former New York Times columnist who also won the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 2008 — plainly warned that Trump's controversial move to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner Erika McEntarfer puts the United States on the same path as authoritarian countries like Argentina and Venezuela.
Krugman said that the sluggish July jobs report — which showed anemic growth of just 73,000 non-farm payroll jobs — wasn't a signal of a bad economy by itself, arguing that it's normal for jobs numbers to fluctuate month to month based on both internal and external circumstances. However, Krugman said that firing McEntarfer over the report was highly abnormal and will likely cause significant shock in financial markets.
"This agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is not a household phrase. But it is absolutely critical. Basically, everything that we know about what's happening to the economy in the last couple of months comes from the BLS," Krugman said. "... It's critical for all of us to understand what's happening, but also how the government itself makes decisions. It's how the Federal Reserve makes decisions. If you start to corrupt those numbers, if you start to report those numbers as being what makes the president look good instead of what's actually happening, then bad things start happening."
"If you ask me, how does someplace like Venezuela get to hyperinflation? How does someplace like Argentina get hyperinflation? ... they start ordering the statistical agencies to report nothing but puppies and rainbows," he continued. "And so they go plunging ahead ... If they ever do admit that maybe we have a problem here, you're up at 80% inflation, right? This is the playbook. We've seen it many, many times. And now, I have to say faster even than I expected. It's come to America, right?"
As Krugman mentioned, Argentina attempted to obscure inflation data following an economic crisis at the onset of the 21st century that led to inflation hitting 41%. As the University of California-Los Angeles' Anderson School of Management reported, the Argentinian government ended up firing the statistician in charge of calculating the Consumer Price Index and then made up numbers on the spot. Krugman opined that Trump's latest move is eerily similar.
"I don't think they're going to be producing fake numbers by next month, but they might be, and it's certainly where Trump wants them to go," Krugman told Melber. "So we're going to be back in Argentina in the days when they were faking the statistics ... I mean, we are in banana republic territory now."
