We are at a symbolic tipping point: Trump firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he believed Friday’s jobs report was manipulated “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” as he wrote on social media.
A classic autocratic (and Pavlovian) response—no evidence, no careful review of the data, just his self-proclaimed genius “gut” instinct.
The report followed
closely on the heels of the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold interest rates
steady. No doubt Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will be blamed, although he has
repeatedly stated that the Fed’s decisions are driven by data. A rate cut is reportedly
likely next month -- whether Powell can endure the constant onslaught from
Trump and his acolytes until then remains to be seen. (It is evidence of dear
leader’s lack of understanding that lowering short term rates – the only rate
over which the Fed has direct control – would have little immediate impact on
the national debt, which his One Big Beautiful Bill exacerbates.)
Powell has also been waiting for the chaos surrounding tariffs to settle—if it ever will. These tariffs are designed to feed the narrative that the U.S. has been treated unfairly by its trading partners. Facts don’t matter. Only the story—and Trump’s self-imagined Superman persona rectifying it.
There is no opposition from Congress, and the glacial pace of a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., in deciding the legality of those tariffs—imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—only adds to the chaos. Even if the court ultimately agrees with the lower courts that Trump lacked authority under the IEEPA, the case will likely land before the Supreme Court—already stacked in his favor.
The point of this brief entry is captured in a quote from 1984 by George Orwell:
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.” The Party’s slogan was: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
In summarily firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Party has spoken. Our Four Freedoms further fade, as captured above by the award-winning editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Mike Luckovich
