When MAGA Prophecy Fails

Being a cultist means never admitting that you were wrong

Like everyone else, I’ve been following the latest Trump-Epstein revelations. Or maybe we should call them confirmations: Unless you were deep in the cult, you already had a pretty good idea of who Trump was and were aware that he and Epstein went way back.

But many Trump loyalists are cultists, sufficiently so that they believed that Donald Trump — Donald Trump! — was heroically defending the world against pedophiles. And we know what cultists do when confronted with facts that refute their beliefs: They engage in denial.

Now, Epstein and all that is — thank God! — not my department. But MAGA’s cultish nature is relevant to matters that are in my usual domain.

For Trump made many prophecies about the economic miracles he would achieve as president. “Starting on day one, we will end inflation,” he promised. “We will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months.” He promised to get gasoline below $2 a gallon. And of course he insisted that he would deliver a jobs boom, especially in manufacturing.

Obviously none of that is happening. Tomorrow’s report on consumer prices will probably show inflation running at close to 3 percent, with most economists expecting it to rise in the months ahead. Electricity prices are rising rapidly, while gas is solidly above $3 a gallon. And job growth appears to be stalling.

Furthermore, much of the bad news is Trump’s own fault. His tariffs and deportations are both adding to inflation and, by creating uncertainty, slowing the economy.

But cultists never admit that their prophecies were wrong. Rather than admit that the promised economic miracle isn’t happening, Trump and his minions have gone after the people reporting the bad news, specifically the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces both jobs and inflation data.

Trump has already fired the head of the BLS for reporting job numbers he didn’t like, claiming falsely that the bad numbers were rigged to hurt him politically. We can expect further claims of partisan bias as the inflation numbers get worse, and eventually, probably quite soon, an attempt to purge and politicize the agency.

The push to politicize the BLS has been reinforced by yesterday’s report from the agency, which revised downward its estimates of past job growth. The White House claimed that it shows that “the BLS is broken.”

It showed no such thing. As a helpful post from the Economic Policy Institute says,

These BLS data revisions are not corrections of mistakes. Revisions are part of the regular, transparent process to update employment counts with the most comprehensive data possible.

As the EPI explains, monthly job numbers don’t literally track every job in America. They’re estimates based on a partial survey of employers. We only get comprehensive data from unemployment insurance tax records, which become available once a year. Revising the estimates based on that data is normal and in no sense a sign that the BLS is doing anything wrong.

But the administration will try to use the revision to discredit the agency, and in particular its recent reports showing a worsening labor market.

So what you need to know is that the BLS is doing its job the way it should, and that there is plenty of additional evidence confirming that the labor market has gotten worse under Trump.

For example, the widely respected Conference Board survey of consumers shows that between last December and August there was a sharp decline in the number of people saying jobs were “plentiful” and a sharp rise in those saying they were “hard to get.”

The New York Fed reports that the percentage of respondents who believe that they could quickly find a new job if they lost their current one has dropped sharply.

And the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, a regular informal survey that often serves as a useful check on formal data, gave a clear picture of stalling employment:

Eleven Districts described little or no net change in overall employment levels, while one District described a modest decline. Seven Districts noted that firms were hesitant to hire workers because of weaker demand or uncertainty. Moreover, contacts in two Districts reported an increase in layoffs, while contacts in multiple Districts reported reducing headcounts through attrition …

This is not a booming economy.

It's not really surprising that Trump is failing to deliver on any of his promises, which never made sense in the first place. Nor is it surprising that he and those around him, rather than making a course correction, are trying to shoot the messengers. But it’s a tragedy that the attempt to suppress bad news may well destroy the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a highly competent and professional agency whose services we need more than ever.

MUSICAL CODA