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Folks, The Number of New Paid Subscribers Dramatically Slowed Last Week. Without You, We Can’t Continue to Expand The Soundcheck Fund—Just as Trump Kills PBS & NPR. Please Consider a Paid Subscription to Support Independent Media
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 [ [link removed] ] and P.T. Barnum bow in reverence – Donald J. Trump.
Yes, 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.
Yes, the actual honest labor numbers upset His Orange Excellency. They refused to dance to the infantile tune of Trump’s ego (as polling numbers have also refused to do recently, also is giving Trump a fit [ [link removed] ]).
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 [ [link removed] ] 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 [ [link removed] ].
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 [ [link removed] ] 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 [ [link removed] ].
Trump is not a man who embraces enlightenment [ [link removed] ] 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 [ [link removed] ], 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 [ [link removed] ]. 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 [ [link removed] ].
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 [ [link removed] ].
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.” [ [link removed] ]
Folks, The Number of New Paid Subscribers Dramatically Slowed Last Week. Without You, We Can’t Continue to Expand The Soundcheck Fund—Just as Trump Kills PBS & NPR. Please Consider a Paid Subscription to Support Independent Media
Thank you, again. And thank you for all you do for our democracy.
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