After whining that people demanded justification for President Trump’s firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics chief Erika McEntarfer beyond failing to manufacture Trump-friendly numbers on the economy, the Media Research Center followed up with whining about concerns that future numbers on the economy will be gamed to make Trump look good. Joseph Vazquez huffed in a Sept. 5 post:
Leave it to The New York Times to still somehow sink itself by stoking a dumb conspiracy theory just before poor economic numbers hit the Trump administration. Just prior to the release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing hiring had stalled in August with only 22,000 jobs added, Times chief economics correspondent Ben Casselman shot his own publication in the foot by wildly speculating on Friday morning that President Trump’s BLS could still wind up fudging numbers. “Is the Jobs Data Still Reliable? Yes, at Least for Now,” read Casselman’s absurd op-ed-ish headline disguised as news.
Casselman’s basis was Trump’s firing of Biden-appointed BLS chief Erika McEntarfer last month — of whom FEC records suggest was a Democrat donor — over allegations that she was rigging numbers. “That prompted a natural question ahead of Friday’s jobs report: Can this month’s numbers be trusted,” questioned Casselman. “The answer, according to economists and experts in government statistics, is yes — but with all the same caveats that always apply to the data.”
Well, the weak jobs data release literally disproved the notion Trump was scheming to mess with BLS data to make him look good, and all the Bidenomics-loving Casselman had to do was wait to critique the jobs numbers and what they meant for Trump’s economic policies. But apparently Trump Derangement Syndrome managed to get Cassleman — whose piece was last updated 10:08 am — to prematurely snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.
Vazquez offered no evidence to back his partisan suggestion that McEntarfer being a “Democrat donor” — which consisted entirely of giving a total of $210 to ActBlue (not the Democratic Party) between 2018 and 2020 — had any influence whatsoever on the economic numbers she put out. And the fact that jobs numbers didn’t immediately improve after McEntarfer’s firing does not disprove the so-called “conspiracy theory” that Trump wants to game numbers to make himself look good.
Craig Bannister served up a badly disguised Trump White House press release in a Sept. 9 post:
Today, the BLS released the largest downward revision on record proving that President Trump was right,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday, noting the significance to Americans of a new employment report issued by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Statistics.
According to the BLS’s preliminary revision released Tuesday, there were actually 911,000 fewer people employed in nonfarm jobs in March than initially reported – the largest revision on record.
“BLS Revisions Show President Trump Was Right – Again,” the White House declared in a post on its website explaining how the massive downward revision supports Trump’s positions:
One of those “positions” was that “The Bureau of Labor Statistics is unreliable and in need of reform.” But as PolitiFact pointed out, the BLS process that produced that number, while imperfect, was transparent and has been used by the agency for decades, and data-collection challenges played a big role in the large revision.
Despite this, Vazquez lashed out again at Times reporter Casselman in another post that day:
For all of New York Times chief economics correspondent Ben Casselman’s fussbudgeting over President Donald Trump supposedly compromising the reliability of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a new report pointing to gross BLS ineptitude just made him look like a complete idiot.
The Bidenomics simp Casselman was forced to report that the BLS overestimated jobs growth during the Biden era — AGAIN — this time by nearly 1 million (-911,000) in the 12-month period ending March 2025, the largest revision on record. Casselman conceded that it was the “latest sign that the labor market, until recently a bright spot in the economy, may be weaker than it initially appeared.”
Remember: this scandalously politicized Fake News came out during the election season.
Again, Vazquez offered no evidence the numbers were deliberately “politicized.” He whined even more about this in a Sept. 12 post:
The pro-Bidenomics clapping seals over at CNN finally had the stones to admit that a major revision in jobs growth has undercut President Joe Biden’s entire economic legacy.
For all the lipstick-smearing CNN did on the pig of Biden’s economy and his supposedly stellar jobs growth, the Bureau of Labor Statistics made a big whoopsie by conceding that it had again wildly overestimated jobs growth during his era in the 12 month period ending March 2025 — this time by a whopping 911,000.
With no clever way to spin, CNN economics reporter Elisabeth Buchwald had to admit the obvious September 10: “Massive jobs revisions are a stain on Joe Biden’s legacy, too.” Yup, Buchwald actually tried to pin some blame on President Donald Trump for this, despite the fact he was only in office for a little over a month in the period the BLS covered.
That’s barely enough time for Trump to pass gas, let alone for his tariff actions to have any real gargantuan effect on the economy. But what more can you expect from the same hapless outlet that spent so much time trying to convince everybody ad nauseum that Biden’s economy was somehow “historic” in any other sense than the complete inflationary disaster that it was?
Vazquez and his MRC co-workers repeatedly talked down the economy under Biden for the sole reason of harming his re-election chances.