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CNBC Tries And Fails To Explain Basic Economic Facts to 'Scared' Trump

CNBC Tries And Fails To Explain Basic Economic Facts to 'Scared' Trump

A CNBC interviewer tried to explain to the President of the United States how jobs numbers work as Elizabeth Warren calls Trump 'scared'.

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Sarah Jones
Aug 05, 2025
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CNBC Tries And Fails To Explain Basic Economic Facts to 'Scared' Trump
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After Donald Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner because Trump’s job numbers were “shockingly bad,” MAGA ally CNBC’s Joe Kernan tried to explain to the President of the United States how job numbers work. It didn’t go well.

FactCheck.org says there is no evidence of Trump’s claims that job numbers were “rigged” and Trump hasn’t provided any evidence of his claims. Additionally, they say Trump’s fiction that BLS tried to rig the election for Democrats is also “incorrect.”

Trump rambled on pushing outright fiction, lies and propaganda about jobs numbers, and the MAGA host had to explain to him how the jobs numbers work. Reminder: Donald Trump is on his second term, and he still doesn’t understand how jobs numbers work. And his narrative about the jobs numbers has exposed more questions about his apparent cognitive decline.

Video:

Trump: Been before, and yet I had to go through hell. We just, days before the election, they put out numbers that it was like the country was on fire. Was doing so well, and then they did a revision about two weeks later, and the revision was down by almost 900,000 jobs. You remember that? And I said, ‘But, man, I said, What would have happened? What would have happened if I lost?’ Think of it, I would have said they gave numbers, and then they revised them a week and a half later.

Kernen: Those were benchmark numbers open for that happens. They do that. They do that twice a year, and it reconciles the monthly figures with like, the overall numbers. And it was a big number. And obviously —

Trump (undeterred by facts and uninterested in learning how his job works): The numbers were, the numbers were rigged. Biden wasn't doing well. He was doing poorly. They announced these phenomenal numbers two days before the election and a little bit before that, always these great numbers. And you knew it wasn't doing well, you knew prices were through the roof and inflation was there, but the whole thing was bad and but think of it. Then they did the biggest revision, I think, in history, of almost 900,000 jobs. And it turned out to be more than that, because later on, they did another revision. And so they gave phony numbers in order to win the election. After I won the election, I said, ‘Too big to rig.’

Back in February, Reuters asked, “Trump inherits a labor market at full employment. Can he keep it there?”

Answer: No.

Forget all of Trump’s rambling gibberish about everyone in the entire world working against him and making up lies about him. The answer is No.

The jobs numbers aren’t “rigged.” Donald Trump “owns this economy,” due to his extremely reckless policies. FactCheck.Org also reminded readers that last August, Trump made more baseless assertions about the job numbers.

“Trump’s claims echo his past baseless assertions that the Biden administration had manipulated data on jobs. Last August, he claimed an annual revision of BLS figures was a “total lie.”

But the jobs commissioner cannot rig the numbers, according to a BLS commissioner appointed by Republican George W. Bush and quoted by FactCheck:

Kathy Utgoff, a former BLS commissioner who was appointed by President George W. Bush, told us in a phone interview that commissioners “can’t rig the numbers. … The commissioner has no ability to change the numbers that come out of computers at the last minute.” BLS staffers “hand the commissioner the press release with the numbers in it” 36 hours before the jobs report is announced.

They also got a quote from a former Trump appointee who said they numbers are all “locked into the computer system,” by the time the commissioner sees them.

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