Trump's Latest "Victory" in Perspective

"U.S. jobless rate unexpectedly declined to 13.3% in May"-Today's headline in the Washington Post

Well, isn't that wonderful!  It went all the way down from 14.7% to 13.3%, assuming that for one second you believe the Trump administration's numbers.  And Donald was whooping it up!


"Really Big Jobs Report. Great going President Trump!"-Donald J. Trump

"These numbers are incredible!  It’s a stupendous number. It’s joyous, let’s call it like it is."-Donald J. Trump

"This is an AMAZING JOBS REPORT! Edward Lawrence @FoxNews"-Donald J. Trump

And here is a graph, showing the incredible, amazing numbers:

The unemployment rate in the US stood at around 5% when Obama turned the country over to Trump, after eight years of continually falling after spiking under (surprise) the last Republican President.  Now, we are expected to believe that Trump, after presiding over an unemployment number that he drove up to 14.7%, is a genius for getting it to fall to 13.3%.  And let us remember that this drop includes States whose Republican governments have basically forced people to go back to work by conspiring to deny them unemployment benefits.

But, Hallelujah, our savior is here!  The unemployment rate, still the highest since the great depression, is now two and a half times what it was when Trump took over, but he cut 1.4% from it!!!!!!  Hooray!  And that is how it is going to be reported, instead of pointing out that his miserable failure continues almost unabated.


Update:  It's a couple of hours later and I can already find a number of sites claiming that (as I presumed) today's numbers were cooked by the Trump administration, in a manner similar to that used by Nixon and other Republican administrations.  I will keep a close look for what evidence underlies these reports, although my past experience is that it is often years before the truth comes out.  And please don't forget the main point of my post: even if the numbers are real, they still represent a near tripling of the unemployment rate under Trump's guidance- a grotesque failure which, true to form, Trump is claiming to be a huge victory.

Update again:  From our good friends at Daily Kos:

"The actual jobs report appeared later in the day and it did say that the unemployment rate was 13.3%. But it also said that the BLS and the Census Bureau were investigating a “misclassification error” around workers sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic. The truth is that the actual unemployment rate was around 16.3%."

 A "misclassification error."  Which just happened to give Trump something to crow about, even though it wasn't true (as usual.)  Sort of like the store clerk who is always making "mistakes" in giving people change, but curiously enough, never in the customer's favor.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Okay, Never Mind

Image
The woman in this picture, equipped with the weapons and ammunition shown, was found outside a National guard base. She is apparently a big Glenn Beck fan, and believed that the base was a FEMA concentration camp. Think she's the only one out there? You just know this sort of thing is not going to end well.
Read more

If a Tree Falls In the Woods

Image
 And nobody hears it, is it really running for President at all? First of all, a note about my absence lately:  My wife got me to sign up for an account at Threads, which is sort of like X without the assholes.  I've spent a little time establishing myself there, and I have to say, I do like the relatively immediate exchange of views, but I don't mean to give up my blog- there are still so many things that can't be dealt with in a couple hundred words, so, perhaps to your dismay, I am back. So, what motivated the above question is the fact that the Sunday New York Times today had seven articles about Trump, and absolutely zero about Kamala Harris.   The Republicans have a problem with Harris, in that virtually everyone who sees her likes her and immediately understands how qualified she is to be President.  They have tried mightily the last month to find some way to smear her, but have been spectacularly unsuccessful- the tactics of character assassination ...
Read more

Wingnuts Slightly Annoyed about that $83 Million

Image
How can you look like a decrepit old geezer and an out of control two year old at the same time? I thought it might be nice to look in on wingnut world to see how they are taking yesterday's $83 million dollar Trump legal loss.  You kind of know that they will decide it shouldn't affect their opinion of him in any way, but it might be helpful to see just how the Republican party has trained them to reject any fact they don't like.  Not that surprisingly, a lot of the usual wingnut suspects didn't touch this loss at all, preferring to just ignore anything that interferes with their hateful daydreams, but here are a few excerpts from an article at Gateway Pundit, along with a sample of the hundreds of comments it received.  Enjoy.  Or not. "Trump attorney Alina Habba WENT OFF after the crooked New York City court slapped President Trump with an $83 million judgment for speaking out against the disgusting lies of a crazed woman who said he lured her into a Bergdorf Go...
Read more