A Buffoon with a Bayonet: Trump’s War on Honest Numbers
Numbers can be tough for a man who needs a calculator to count bankruptcies, impeachments, marriages, sexual-assault allegations, indictments & convictions
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By David Shuster
Once upon a time, the American public rightfully believed that numbers—cold, pitiless, and fully immune to the whims of politicians—could be trusted.
On our worst days (and best) of war, peace, prosperity, financial implosion, and mother nature, U.S. government statistics were the one thing that could be counted on to deliver empirical sanity.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in particular, was a heavy granite marker of such sanity. Now, it has been toppled and crushed by a man who would make Jeffrey Epstein blush and P.T. Barnum bow in reverence – Donald J. Trump.
In a fit of characteristic petulance akin to a spoiled child denied a happy meal, Trump has fired the commissioner of the BLS. The crime? Not corruption, nor incompetence, nor scandal.
No, something far worse in the warped court of MAGA: the commissioner told the truth.
And the labor numbers upset His Orange Excellency. They refused to dance to the infantile tune of Trump’s ego (as polling refused to Merengue to his id).
Unemployment figures—measured by dull but diligent statisticians armed with nothing more lethal than survey data and Excel spreadsheets—had the temerity to contradict Trump’s promises. And by contradict, I mean his job creation absolutely nosedived.
Delivering yet another blow to both Trump and his predilection for predicting his success at…well, anything.
So, with the theatrical flourish of a despot whose understanding of governance begins and ends with applause meters at his rallies and financial payoffs for his corruption, Trump axed the BLS commissioner.
In saner times, a president tampering with labor statistics would be tarred, feathered, and sent back to his tower to count his gold toilets. A functioning non-monopoly media might remind people—as we have—that blaming census takers and not himself for a shrinking Russia due to economic self-sabotage and the resulting famine was the playbook of some guy named Stalin.
You’ve probably heard of him.
But in this new Gilded Age of Trump, truth is treason, arithmetic is an affront, and independent institutions are but props to be smashed when they cease to flatter the Don’s imperial vanity.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Trump, has long waged war against expertise and knowledge. Scientists, economists, PhD’s -- he regards them all with the same sneering contempt Trump reserves for the facts themselves. Or fair play.
Trump is not a man who embraces enlightenment or literacy, let alone intellectual humility. To expect this man to respect the integrity of labor statistics is like asking a deaf donkey to appreciate opera.
This firing is not merely a tantrum; it is a warning. It says, loud and clear that no civil servant is safe if he or she fails to genuflect before the gospel of Trump. Today, it is a statistician; tomorrow, it will be the census taker, the weather forecaster, the high-school math teacher who dares to teach percentages.
The only permissible numbers will be those scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin by some inebriated or Kool-Aid drinking Trump White House aide. Then blared from Truth Social—or those Karoline Leavitt lips Trump is so creepily consumed with—like commandments from on high.
Let’s be clear. Trump is not a reformer, or economic crusader, or trade war virtuoso. He is a vandal. He is a swaggering pompous, uninformed, self-absorbed jackass in fancy suits and extra-long ties who destroys or damages literally everything he touches. And now, Trump is trampling on and shredding basic arithmetic.
Some math, though, cannot be erased. In 2024, The U.S. Senate confirmed Dr. Erica McEntarfer as commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 86-8. Her predecessor, who also worked under Trump, excoriated Mango Mussolini for engaging in the actions of a tin-pot tyrant.
Even J.D. Vance, an Ohio Senator at the time, voted in favor of her confirmation.
In the ledger of our national decline, let the record show that at the start of August 2025, Dr McEntarfer was cast aside not for lying, but for failing to lie. Meanwhile, the man who did it, Donald Trump, is not fit to run a lemonade stand, let alone our republic.
Go ahead and Google the recent economic and financial histories of Greece and Argentina if you want to see where Trump is now taking us. International investors have already started bailing on the United States of America.
And analysts are predicting that it will get significantly worse.
Give Trump an ass-kissing tweet or a million-dollar purchase of his merch or crypto scam, and he’ll give you fantasy. Give Trump a fact and he’ll fire you.
God help us all.
David Shuster is an Emmy award winning broadcast journalist who is best known for his work at NBC News and as an anchor MSNBC. He is a contributor to Blue Amp Substack and co-host of our weekly show (Thursdays, 2pm et, on Substack), “Amped Up w/ Cliff Schecter.”
I’m fed up with the republicans that are not even attempting to stop the idiot.
We have 4 in our state. Capito is running ads trying to convince us that the big ugly bill is the best thing for us since Apple pie. That she’s standing with tRUMP to make America great.
You probably don’t know that her Dad, Arch Moore the Governor at the time. Went to prison for extortion, vote buying, kick backs, cash pay offs and rigging the bidding of contracts.
He also took our retirement money that was deducted from our wages. From our retirement account. Promising to pay it back but he didn’t. Used the money to pay off the unemployment debt. It was never repayed, then out retirement fund has since then become more and more underfunded. While the state never has the money to allocate the funds back into our retirement system.
Capito’s sister was involved in an investigation along with the major of Charleston for drugs. The case file was sealed.
Nailed it!