Responding to news that unemployment jumped to a four-year high of 4.6%, President Donald Trump lashed out at the “fake news” media and claimed he could slash that number by more than half, to 2%.
In a Truth Social post, the president claimed that the “only” reason unemployment “ticked up” is because “we are reducing the Government Workforce by numbers that have never been seen before.”
He also mischaracterized the unemployment rate as 4.5%, not 4.6%, the official and widely-reported number.
Trump then explained how he could reduce the unemployment rate.
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“I could reduce Unemployment to 2% overnight by just hiring people into the Federal Government, even though those Jobs are not necessary,” he wrote.
Trump’s remarks align with comments made one day earlier by Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, as CNN’s Alayna Treene noted.
When asked why the president had claimed that unemployment is down during his Wednesday primetime address, Hassett appeared to suggest that federal government jobs should not be part of the calculation.
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“If you look at the numbers, then there’s really one big factor that explains the difference, and that is that because of tightening government spending,” Hassett told Treene. “We’ve reduced federal employment by 250,000 workers.”
“And so if you adjust the unemployment rate for the fact that there’s been a large loss for government workers, for federal government workers, then you get numbers that are consistent with what the president’s saying.”
Trump finished his post by writing, “I wish the Fake News would report the 4.5% correctly. What I am doing is the only way to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
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Image via Reuters