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\n When authoritarianism encroaches, apologists often present a strongman\u2019s power grabs as rational \u2014 even imperative for the national good.\n <\/p>\n
\n Top Trump administration aides followed that playbook on Sunday, justifying the president\u2019s abrupt firing of the government\u2019s top labor official in charge of employment statistics over jobs numbers that dented his proclamation of a new \u201cgolden age.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n But the ouster of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer<\/a>, taken alongside President Donald Trump\u2019s concurrent bid to destroy the independence of the Federal Reserve, threatens the US economy\u2019s reputation as a bulwark of stability and integrity that has undergirded generations of prosperity.\n <\/p>\n \n Such political interference might bolster Trump\u2019s ever-growing power. But it could backfire by eroding the trust of investors, companies and organizations that depend on accurate and truthful statistics on the economy\u2019s health to make major decisions that can impact the lives of millions of people. Even the Federal Reserve uses it to decide on monetary policy.\n <\/p>\n \n And when countries don\u2019t firewall official data, they risk ending up like Argentina or Greece, where the invention of rosy statistics masked economic malaise and sparked financial crises. Or China, where fantastical official figures designed to bolster the regime\u2019s credibility fostered corruption \u2014 and benefited the US by comparison.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s assault on the BLS is also more than a narrow economic question. It\u2019s the latest erratic move by a president who believes he has total power and is immune from consequences, and who has become increasingly hubristic following a string of political wins this summer.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s domination of Congress and testing of constitutional limits have compromised constraints on presidential authority in a nation founded on the rejection of punitive and impetuous economic decisions by an all-powerful ruler.\n <\/p>\n \n His quest for omnipotence across society can also be seen in his successful attempts to impose his ideology on top universities, his coercion of big-time law firms and his attacks on the media. Mirroring his assault on economic data, Trump and his aides have launched a purge of government scientists and experts whose findings conflict with the MAGA movement\u2019s doctrine on climate and vaccines. And while Republican presidents have sometimes had a point in arguing that their goals can be thwarted by a bureaucracy that they regard as overly liberal, Trump\u2019s assault on the federal government that he leads has funneled ever more unaccountable power into the Oval Office.\n <\/p>\n \n But the president is taking a big economic risk.\n <\/p>\n \n In the short term, his attack on the credibility of government data may exacerbate the economic uncertainty already gathering around the White House and darkening GOP prospects in next year\u2019s midterm elections.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cBLS is the finest statistical agency in the entire world. Its numbers are trusted all over the world,\u201d former Commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics William Beach told Kasie Hunt on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union.\u201d \u201cI do believe, though, that the president\u2019s attack on the commissioner and on the bureau is undermining that infrastructure, could undermine that trust over the long term.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Senior Trump aides went onto Sunday shows to make a case for his volatile reaction to the jobs numbers that subverted his own version of reality.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they\u2019re more transparent and more reliable,\u201d Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House Economic Council, said Sunday<\/a> on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Another top Trump official, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, argued that \u201cyou want to be able to have somewhat reliable numbers.\u201d He said on CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation\u201d that \u201cthere are always revisions, but sometimes, you see these revisions go in really extreme ways. \u2026 The president is the president. He can choose who works in the executive branch.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Trump was irked by job data that showed the economy created only 73,000 jobs in July. The monthly totals for May and June were also revised downward by a combined 258,000 jobs. Such recalculations are integral to the bureau\u2019s task of presenting an accurate picture of the economy over the longer term, and not just month to month. In this case, the jobs numbers appeared to confirm other indicators that contradict Trump\u2019s claims the economy is roaring, amid data showing slowing growth and a rise in inflation last month.\n <\/p>\n \n One big danger now is that Trump\u2019s 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?\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cSuppose that they get a new commissioner, and this person, male or female, are just the best people possible, right? And they do a bad number. Well, everybody\u2019s going to think, \u2018Well, it\u2019s not as bad as it probably really is,\u2019 because they\u2019re going to suspect political influence,\u201d Beach said on \u201cState of the Union.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The president\u2019s turn against his own government\u2019s nonpartisan number-crunchers when they produced a report that he didn\u2019t like was rather predictable.\n <\/p>\n \n In 2018, he coaxed supporters from the real world into his illusory political environment, saying<\/a>, \u201cJust remember, what you\u2019re seeing and what you\u2019re reading is not what\u2019s happening.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n This mantra was borne out during his first term.\n <\/p>\n \n In his first hours in office, Trump furiously ignited a controversy over the size of the crowd at his inauguration, which he claimed, despite photographic evidence, was the biggest ever. At the time, this seemed an absurd sideshow. But it turned out to set the stage for an entire presidency of fabricating facts.\n <\/p>\n \n His attempt now to invent jobs numbers that fit with his version of reality recalls his negligent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump frequently claimed that if the US stopped testing for the virus<\/a>, it would simply have no more cases.\n <\/p>\n \n And Trump\u2019s claim that Friday\u2019s jobs numbers were \u201crigged\u201d recalls his greatest-ever attack on truth: his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. When voters produced a result that he didn\u2019t like, he attempted to destroy the credibility of the system that produced it and to fix the outcome.\n <\/p>\n \n Memories of 2020 are especially sobering in the light of Friday\u2019s developments because of the way Trump\u2019s personal embarrassments often lead him to pursue authoritarian outcomes.\n <\/p>\n \n Often, Trump\u2019s critics have proclaimed that authoritarianism is on the march whatever he does. There\u2019s an entire political and media industrial complex devoted to the idea that Americans are already living under a dictatorship.\n <\/p>\n \n There\u2019s no comparison to the one-party police state endured by citizens of China. The dynastic tyranny of North Korea has no echoes in the United States, and this country is far short of the psychological torture suffered by the people of Myanmar, who live under a pervasive, repressive state. But Trump\u2019s actions are adding to growing evidence that he is engineering a degradation of democratic and pluralistic institutions. Comparisons between the president and populist authoritarian strongmen leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan look increasingly apt.\n <\/p>\n \n The new controversy over jobs numbers comes at a moment when the second Trump administration is acting almost without restraint.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump single-handedly remade the global trading system by imposing tariffs<\/a>, apparently according to his whims, while completely bypassing a genuflecting GOP Congress that has done nothing to defend its constitutional authority to dictate policy in that area.\n <\/p>\n \n His transformation of the intelligence services into a vessel for his political convenience has led to false claims and probes accusing President Barack Obama\u2019s administration of treason over Russian election meddling in 2016.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s weaponization of the Justice Department is creating immense suspicion after Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a more lenient prison after two days of talks with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Trump is struggling to end a political crisis over his ties to her late associate Jeffrey Epstein, an accused sex trafficker and convicted sex offender.\n <\/p>\n \n And on Sunday, Trump\u2019s demands for a rewriting of congressional districts in Texas<\/a> to make it easier for Republicans to cling onto the House next year precipitated a political crisis that is now having national implications.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s second term has often seemed like an attempt to recast the world as he\u2019d prefer it to be. He\u2019s pardoned or released criminals convicted in connection with the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. The Pentagon has removed photos of top brass who contradicted him from its walls. And Trump has repeatedly attacked judges and claimed their actions are illegal as part of a pattern of behavior that CNN\u2019s Aaron Blake has justifiably called Orwellian<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n An apparent sense that there\u2019s no restraint on his power now seems to be feeding into Trump\u2019s foreign policy.\n <\/p>\n \n Angered by Russia\u2019s failure to sign up to his Ukraine peace plan, Trump last week reacted to threats by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev by saying he\u2019d repositioned US nuclear submarines.\n <\/p>\n \n Medvedev is now mostly known as an online troll and has only a minor position in Russian politics, so it\u2019s hard to understand why Trump was so easily goaded. And Trump\u2019s reaction ignored the fact that submarines that prowl the oceans in silence, carrying the second tier of the US nuclear deterrent, are constantly in position to fire off their missiles. But the spectacle of an American president indulging in nuclear saber-rattling, just before this week\u2019s 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, was chilling.\n <\/p>\n \n Meanwhile, Trump had a volcanic reaction following a rare show of dissent from Capitol Hill when Democrats, using their minority privileges in the Senate, blocked an attempt to ram through his conservative judicial nominees before the summer recess. Trump told Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer<\/a> of New York to \u201cGO TO HELL!\u201d after the collapse of a deal to swap some nominee confirmations for the restoration of some government funding cuts.\n <\/p>\n \n Such an extreme reaction to a rather routine example of congressional gridlock only underscores how Trump has become used to getting his way.\n <\/p>\n \n And he\u2019s determined that no one will stop him.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link When authoritarianism encroaches, apologists often present a strongman\u2019s power grabs as rational \u2014 even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-43870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Job](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gettyimages-2221496581.jpg\")
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