Trump's Term "No Bad News": Good Ones Are Exaggerated, Bad Ones Are a Scam
"The US President Trump is accelerating his long-standing practice of excluding all facts and data that conflict with his perfect governance narrative," said an article published by the American political news website Axios on August 9.
In this "Trump reality," good data are widely publicized, even if the data are made up by him himself; bad numbers are considered fake, even if they come from the same institution, and are seen as malicious smear campaigns against him. The accusations against the Democrats must be investigated thoroughly, while those against him are labeled as "witch hunts."
More worrying is that the article points out, most departments of the federal government have begun to operate according to his perception of reality.
The latest incident occurred last Friday. At that time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report stating that the US added 73,000 jobs in July, far below market expectations. Meanwhile, the report significantly revised down the employment data for May and June, with May's new jobs falling from 144,000 to 19,000, and June's from 147,000 to 14,000, a total revision of 258,000 positions over two months.
This "most concerning" economic data during his term angered Trump greatly. He immediately took action to fire the director of the bureau, Erica McEntee, accusing her of "manipulating data" to embarrass him. He also used the bureau's revised employment data from previous months as evidence of "data fabrication." Trump also brought up old grievances, claiming that McEntee was an official appointed by former President Biden, who had "artificially exaggerated" employment data before the 2020 election to "increase the chances of Democratic candidate Harris winning."
Overall, the strategy adopted by the Trump team is to select data to make their management of the economy look better and make political opponents look worse.
For example, the latest US gross domestic product (GDP) data show that the second quarter GDP grew at an annual rate of 3%, exceeding the market expectation of 2.4%. The Trump team seized upon this to promote it extensively, but they deliberately ignored the underlying growth of only 1.2%. Last week, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation indicator rose by 2.8% annually, yet the Trump team directed attention to another lower figure, the 2.1% increase in the personal consumption expenditure price index for the second quarter.
Axios website pointed out that Trump's narrative had been laid out 200 days ago. In his January inaugural speech, Trump declared that America would enter a "golden age" and immediately characterized it as already achieved, rather than a goal to be worked for. After several months of blaming "Biden's economy" for poor performance, the White House announced the official debut of the "Trump economy" last week. However, just two days later, the bleak employment data came like a bucket of cold water.
Similarly, in polls, Trump often promotes his support rate as "unreasonably high," but data from the American comprehensive polling website "RealClearPolitics" show that his support has not been high since mid-March, currently standing at 45%. Other polls also indicate that public disapproval of Trump's presidential work is between 46% and 51%.
Regarding the "big and beautiful" tax and spending bill that Trump vigorously promotes, surveys show that more than half of Americans oppose it. This bill did not receive much support in several polls in June, with its support rate being 29% according to the Pew Research Center, and 35% of people holding a negative attitude according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) survey.
On the issue of deporting illegal immigrants, even though the methods of law enforcement officials have become increasingly radical, public attitudes toward immigration have clearly become more moderate, but the Trump administration still decided to take the hardest extremist approach.
The Axios article states that even in some areas where the Trump administration has achieved certain results, they tend to use exaggerated statements to elevate these achievements. He claimed last week that he "prevented six wars, solving one war on average each month." In reality, the US played some role in mediating between Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, but the two major issues of Gaza and Ukraine remain unresolved.
The Newsweek magazine also pointed out that although members of the Trump administration and some of his supporters call him the "chief peacemaker" and often nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, more critics say that Trump and his administration were not as involved in many peace talks as they claimed, and the ceasefires and peace agreements he advocated were soon proven to be fragile, some of which broke or were on the verge of breaking within weeks of their announcement.
In the key area of economics, Axios website admitted that the government controlled inflation to some extent, but Trump's claims about drug prices dropping "1200%, 1300%, 1400%, 1500%" and oil prices dropping to $2 are complete nonsense.
Geoffrey Joyce, Director of the Health Policy and Economics Center at the University of Southern California's Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, said that Trump's data are "completely fictional," which would be equivalent to pharmaceutical companies paying customers.
Mariana Socal, associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University, also found that "it is difficult to convert these numbers into actual figures that patients see at the pharmacy counter," and Trump's math "is really hard to understand."
More notably, the Trump administration seems to have started redefining some economic indicators. GDP data come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is supervised by Commerce Secretary Luis Gutierrez, but he now advocates that the GDP calculation formula should exclude government spending.
In March this year, Gutierrez complained, "If the government buys a tank, it counts as GDP, but paying 1000 people to consider buying a tank does not count as GDP, that's wasting money."
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1840080928757836/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.