ldstephens weblog

If you don’t like the result, fire the messenger

Revised job numbers released Friday by the Labor Department suggest that the U.S. job market appears weaker than previously understood, with employers sharply reducing new hiring in May and June. So what did Trump do? He fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency responsible for reporting those numbers.

The data didn’t support the narrative he wanted, so he dismissed the person in charge of delivering it. There was no evidence of wrongdoing—just…gone. If you don’t like the result, question the process. Undermine it. Replace the people who won’t play along. This behavior chips away at trust. When public data becomes politicized, uncomfortable facts are labeled “fake,” and experts lose their jobs for telling the truth, how are we, the American people, supposed to believe anything coming out of our institutions?

¯_(ツ)_/