President Of ‘Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings’ Party Fires Statistician For Reporting Facts That Hurt His Feelings
from the oh-the-garbage-man-can,-lisa dept
We’re becoming everything we (perhaps naively) assumed most Americans didn’t want America to be: a backwater burg on the world map, overseen by a corrupt sheriff and known mostly for our routine rights violations and unwillingness to treat facts as facts. Bigotry is again the national sport and people bringing inconvenient facts are just fodder for firing squads.
You’re getting the government you deserve, even if you claim you didn’t vote specifically for whatever new insanity might be hurting you personally at this moment in time. You wanted a demagogue and you got one — a man so incapable of handling the slightest bit of bad news, he feels compelled to go full Stalin the moment a factoid puts a slight dent in his self-perception as the Greatest Human Being Who Has Ever Walked The Face Of The Earth.
His party — and his enablers — spent years screaming into the faces of anyone questioning their mere humanity that “facts” were more important than “feelings.” But that was never true. Only facts that allowed them to be inhumane towards their fellow human beings mattered. All other facts should be ignored, buried, or misrepresented. And their top dude – King Shit himself — feels the same way. When the facts aren’t the facts he likes, they become subservient to his feelings.
So, when Department of Labor employment stats reflected the reality of six months of absolute financial psychopathy from President Trump, Trump decided the best response was to shoot the messenger. We can only take solace in the fact that he didn’t do this literally.
Behold the power of your Golden Calf, “we didn’t vote for this” asshats!
President Donald Trump on Friday fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, hours after the agency reported that job growth in the U.S. had slowed to a near-halt.
In a Truth Social post that also directed even more fire at Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Trump accused BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer of being a political appointee who was manipulating jobs data.
This reporting downplays the pure un-hingedness that is Trump’s actual social media post. The obvious outcome of massive tariffs (some threatened, some deployed) and the ejection of thousands of tax-paying, hardworking employees of US companies whose jobs will never be filled by the same white people claiming these jobs were “stolen” from them resulted in an outcome that would have been obvious to anyone who’s ever spent more than 5 minutes paying attention in an Economics class.
Job growth slowed because US manufacturers are finding that everything that isn’t uncertain is now certainly more expensive. And the ejection of more than 100,000 people from the work force via mass deportation efforts has left more holes than natural-born Americans willing to fill them.
Of course, Trump will never take the blame for anything that’s directly his fault. So he went to his own social media service to perform a public execution of the person bearing the inevitable bad news.
I’m going to quote it in full because I’m absolutely daring the Trump supporters who read this site to wade into the comment section with their defense of whatever the fuck this is:
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. This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that 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. These were Records — No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. 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. Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative. 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!
This absolute coward and loser thinks job numbers are a political operation meant to make him look bad. But the numbers are what they are. While presidents have always been willing to apply spin to job numbers, no one until Trump has been willing to fire a Labor official simply for reporting facts.
Most GOP members are abject cowards. But at least a couple of them stepped up to criticize (however mildly) this transparently authoritarian action by Donald “My Feelings Don’t Care About Your Facts” Trump:
“If the president is firing the statistician because he doesn’t like the numbers but they are accurate, then that’s a problem,” said Wyoming Republican senator Cynthia Lummis. “It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the president had hoped for.”
Lummis added that if the numbers are unreliable, the public should be told – but firing McEntarfer was “kind of impetuous”.
North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, a Republican, said: “If she was just fired because the president or whoever decided to fire the director just … because they didn’t like the numbers, they ought to grow up.”
The biggest problem isn’t that Trump did this, although it is actually a serious problem. The biggest problem is that Trump did this despite it being immediately apparent this was done solely to punish someone for daring to publish facts that undermined the administration’s narrative on tariffs, mass deportation, and the alleged benefits of shitting the international bed on a regular basis.
But all the firings in the world won’t change the facts: the Trump administration is eviscerating everything that makes America great. And while it works towards the goal of creating a perpetual fascist state for Trump and his acolytes, it will steadily destroy everything that makes America operable. Trump will break this country and then declare his love for its corpse while fondling an American flag.
Filed Under: bullshit, bureau of labor, employment, erika mcentarfer, facts, loser energy, stats, trump administration
Comments on “President Of ‘Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings’ Party Fires Statistician For Reporting Facts That Hurt His Feelings”
The headlines should be highlighting the absurdity: Man who pushed out 150,000 government employees insists no jobs have been lost and anyone who says differently will lose their job.
Re:
‘The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.’ -George Orwell, 1984
Re: Re: Reminds me of a different quotation
“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” — Trump, 2018
Nation debt goes up.
Inflation goes up.
Tariffs goes up.
Jobs goes up, right?
'How DARE you point out the king's lack of clothing?!'
It gets even better/worse as when asked about how people are supposed to trust the numbers going forward he outright said that they shouldn’t, so on some level in his rotted brain he knows that the statistics for a whole slew of things are not going to support his claims and he’s trying to preemptively get people to distrust them leaving only his word on how things are going.
MAGATs are the party of ‘it’s only true or real if I agree with it’ and as such the latest person to be fired committed the cardinal sin of pointing to reality rather than agreeing with whatever the Dear Leader said.
Trump's next hire
“Hire me someone that will tell me job growth is improving the most under any president ever!!”
Things are going to get really interesting(read: horrifying) when Trump replaces both the head of the BLS as well as the chairman of the Fed.
He didn’t just fire McEntarfer, he defamed her. There really is no depth he won’t sink to.
Re:
Can we send Trump to the Mariana Trench, then?
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
“The biggest problem is that Trump did this despite it being immediately apparent this was done solely to punish someone for daring to publish facts that undermined the administration’s narrative”
Regime.
Re:
Are you happy with this constant, petulant whining about regimes?
Shouldn’t you be spending more time wanking instead of pushing this boring shit in everyone else’s face? Again? And again and again?
At least that way you’d be happier
Re:
Do you have literally anything better to do with your time?
Re: Re:
Do you have anything better to do with your time than constantly replying to this repeated request for “accuracy”? Why not just simply flag it and move on like the rest of us?
Re: Re: Re:
Flagging doesn’t stop the next one on the next article.
Re: Re: Re:2
But replying to it adds to the noise you’re complaining about, shit for brains.
Ok, lets do the thing, they Did First.
Lets demand that they Answer:
Are you Christian?
No matter the answer the TOP 5 religions Specify the SAME RULE.
BE NICE TO EACH OTHER.
Yell at them that they ARNT being CONSERVATIVE. THEY arnt Passing ANY religion ideals that they RAN ON and DEMANDED of OTHERS. Take your Pick of the TOP 5.
To bad we cant do this to India.
Before he got into Office he had Shook Hands with as Many religious groups(Christian, jewish,??) he could find. Now where is he?
He is in Office DOING what EVER he wanted. AND for some reason Even the GOP hasnt figured this, as Trump is Trying to Look good for 1 side while Messing everything ELSE UP.
He does not Like the LAws, Because he keeps Failing to Follow them, and WANTS his money back. The GOP Likes State laws to cover everything, and NOT Federal. So they can Change their minds Anytime they wish. Dont ask about the Electricalk service in Texas, and It NOT upgrading forever.
Well, Trump has a point
The stock market works like a gambling site: the way to make money is not to bet against the house/system but to make money off the fools who think they can beat the odds.
If you want to turn the stock market (and the labor market) to your advantage, there is no point in catering for rational people since they will make their decision based on the market.
To make a difference in the market, you need to get the irrational people on your side. The rational ones will always follow wherever the irrational people go, like rats and vultures following nomads and settlers around.
Firing the head of BLS will not fool the rats and vultures, but the rats and vultures will still follow the meat of the market wherever it bleeds.
So yes, his strategy will work to a point. Foreign investments are where things get iffier because that’s where first-tier investors and more reliable numbers meet.
It remains to be seen whether Trump can also fool the bond market.
Re:
That’s basically being the house, and probably is a good way to make money. A brokerage, for example, makes money off each transaction (even if the commission is zero), so will want to convince its clients to churn, churn, churn.
Another way is to just buy some stocks (such as via an index fund; but even random selection works reasonably well) and then do nothing. In other words, ignore the provocations of the aforementioned “house”. Brokerage accounts whose owners forgot about them for decades tend to have really good results.
(U.S. investors can easily access funds that invest outside the U.S., if they’re so inclined.)
The best part is that his stated rationale for firing McEntarfer is that she withheld the real numbers to make him look bad, but what the numbers actually did is paint an unrealistically rosy picture of the economy under his own mismanagement. The numbers covered for him and allowed him to take a “victory” lap for three months and pretend that all his tariff nonsense and immigrant witch hunts were having no negative effects on the economy. He’s bitching about his win and canning the person who helped him.
Re:
exactly!
I deliberated and voted defensively.
Much as in 2016, I knew we had a better chance of petitioning queen log to move left and rescue some of the frogs getting forgotten in the post recovery / bailout economy. Technically, Queen Log won the popular vote the first time, but the elections are stacked in favor of Heron’s party, what has been a known problem for over a century.
This time there were just too many forgotten frogs and they voted for Heron, hoping they wouldn’t be the first frogs to be eaten. Some were mistaken in that assessment.
(According to Richard J Murphy, in late 2024 Neoliberal parties were losing to far right parties a lot in other developed countries, including Labor to the Tories. There has been a revival, possibly due to the rest of the world looking at Trump and what he’s doing, and deciding they don’t want that)
The other major factor is the billion-dollar far-right propaganda machine, which is drawing the most viewership and pushes false narratives in favor of Heron and against Log.
It’s really difficult to blame the voters, who did what they did by the millions. We have to treat low-information voting, or voting against self-interest as an epidemic affected by circumstances, not as an individual personal choice. Okay, they were stupid, but why, and how do we make voters less stupid; okay, some voters were apathetic. How do we make them less apathetic?
I don’t have answers, but we can find them.
Democracy won’t work without a deliberative electorate who votes according to self-interest. And it really doesn’t work with only two major parties. So there are fixes that can reduce election fraud that is widespread. In the meantime until we fix democracy, we don’t have democracy. We have a pageant of politics in the color of democracy.
(Clarification: The US has very little voter fraud, but we have a lot of manipulation and voter suppression, like gerrymandering and disincentivizing voters, which also qualify as election fraud.)
Joanne Freeman observes that the OBBBA budget reconciliation law is actually on brand for the republican party since the Reagan era. It is not especially Trumpy, even if it might go further than prior tax-lowering efforts. The GOP depends on suppressing Democrat votes and convincing independent voters that they’re not going to do the same thing this time.
I thought it might be too late before November 2024. It may be even more too late. I hope not.
Re:
Traditional right-wing parties like the Tories may be losing, but neoliberalism is alive and well. Trump, UK Reform and other far-right parties are a continuation of neoliberalism by other means.
Neoliberalism is, first and foremost, government by the wealthy. Having a functioning democracy is optional.
Where are the adults in the room?
We’ve known for over 10 years that Trump is an egotistical cry baby who bullies people into getting what he wants.
In his first term, he was surrounded by adults who could rein him in, including Congress.
Yet now, there’s no one to tell him “no”. He hasn’t changed yet everyone else in power is letting him get away with it.
The solution is to make Republican politicians more afraid of the voters than of Trump. Sure, they might be rigging elections and changing districts so they always win, but at some point a vast majority of people are going to reject this nonsense.
This was always the plan.
Why not replace Biden’s BLS commissioner at the first opportunity? Because they could use her! They knew that, whenever job numbers became a problem, they could just blame this convenient scapegoat they’d kept around, and buy time for themselves.
It’s basic political skulduggery.
Re:
That implies cunning which I doubt any of these clowns possess.
The irony...
The irony of Trump’s accusation that the BLS numbers were skewed for political reasons is that lower employment numbers boost Trump’s case against the Fed for not lowering interest rates.
So I’d argue that if the stats were manipulated for political purposes, they were more likely manipulated to further Trump’s goal of hyper-inflating the economy, than to make him “look bad”.