New Trump Job Numbers Are Weak
Trump posts worst job numbers since last Trump, even WITHOUT the help of a pandemic
Sept. 5: Trumponomics literally reduced jobs in June … Trump saves airline passengers from refunds for delayed flights, so you’re welcome America … Trump ordered secret 2019 North Korea mission that killed civilians and then illegally didn’t tell Congress about it and holy shit when you put it that way that seems bad … Congress ending military occupation of Washington next week …
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The U.S. economy added just 22,000 jobs last month, a much lower number than the July numbers that cost the previous Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) director her own job last month.
The dismal job growth — less than a third of the also-low prediction economists made — came in the first full month after employers were supposed to have been job-stimulated by Pres. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OhBuBBA) and all its giveaways to the rich that they were going to use to hire people, as expected by no one who’s ever met a rich person.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.3%.
Revised numbers show that the U.S. economy lost jobs in June for the first time since the last time someone gave Trump the keys. An estimated 13,000 jobs disappeared that month, as businesses faced fewer international shipments, disappearing inventory, and disappearing customers in the face of higher tariffs.
Unemployment for Black people is now the highest it’s been in eight years.
One piece of good news for employment is terrible news for the country. The number of jobs for teachers is growing … in private education. Suggesting a growing rift between education for the rich and upper middle-class … and everyone else.
Twelve-thousand manufacturing jobs disappeared in August alone.
The country today now has 78,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than it did when Trump took office, despite Trump’s effort to increase manufacturing jobs by killing Pres. Joe Biden’s manufacturing incentives.
Here’s what the job numbers look like in picture form that even a president who graduated from Wharton can understand. Each column shows the job changes from the month before:
Can you show me where on the chart Trump hurt you?
Trump had claimed that the BLS was cooking its numbers to hurt him, which means today’s shitty job numbers are either true or sugar-coating even shittier numbers. Trump only nominated his BLS director this week, and just this morning, we learned what nominee E.J. Antoni’s background includes, in lieu of relevant experience.
Namely, Antoni secretly ran social-media accounts that posted shit guaranteed to get him a job in the Trump administration:
When then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) ended her 2020 presidential race, Antoni tweeted, “You can’t run a race on your knees,” implying that the senator owed her political career to fellatio.
Antoni told women that “To Land a Great Guy” one should “grow your hair long,” “be sweet,” “learn to cook,” and “don’t be annoying.”
Antoni called Christine Blasey Ford, a victim of sexual assault by just one of Trump’s nominees accused of sexual assault — now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh — “Miss Piggy.”
Without even bothering to fake any evidence, Antoni called economist and writer Paul Krugman, former FBI Director James Comey, and Pres. Joe Biden pedophiles. But not Trump!
Antoni said of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), “No one wants to have sex with that catfish.”
And referring to a post by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) about “LGBTQIA+” issues, Antoni responded, “Does the I stand for incest? With your brother?”
The good news about today’s crappy job numbers, however, is that now America can trust them! Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said just this morning — before the new numbers came out — that the accuracy of today’s job numbers will be an improvement over the also-accurate previous job numbers.
“I think they’ll get better,” Lutnick said, “because you’ll take out the people who are just trying to create noise against the president.”
In other words, Americans today can now be confident that Trump really, truly is dramatically slowing job creation, spiking Black unemployment, and actually destroyed jobs in June.
Trump Saves Airline Passengers from Burdensome Refunds
The Trump administration on Thursday successfully intercepted incoming checks from the airlines, protecting passengers whose flights are delayed from the impact of several hundred dollars in compensation.
Under Pres. Joe Biden, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg advanced a new rule that would have made airlines pay you $200-$300 for flight delays of more than three hours and $775 for really long, livestream-it-and-go-viral delays. But the rule hadn’t taken effect yet and on Thursday, America got back the no-refunds policy it voted for.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy actually had less relevant experience than Buttigieg did (except as a lobbyist!) but now has more in the specific area of having to deal with a deadly major passenger-jet crash. And Duffy announced on Thursday that the refund rule is being yoinked.
Also on the to-yoink list: Duffy disclosed that he might let airlines return to hiding “service” fees that Biden forced them to not hide. Passengers can still get refunds for flights being canceled entirely, so the Trump administration is also working on redefining “Canceled” the way Pres. Donald Trump has personally redefined “No” to mean “Yes.”
The trade group that represents American, Delta, and United had warned that delay refunds would have caused ticket prices to magically rise. Which is an admission that their business model requires the flexibility to jerk you around without cost.
Trump Fails at Harvard
Pres. Donald Trump tried to get through Harvard but couldn’t because of his mouth. District Judge Allison Burroughs on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze almost $3 billion in Harvard grants and funding, ruling that Trump was full of shit about his reasons.
And she had evidence. Because Trump couldn’t stop his face mouth from mouth flapping. Or his hand fingers from shitposting.
Trump had claimed that he was freezing the funds to punish Harvard for putatively rampant campus antisemitism that was in reality much less rampanter and institutionalized than the White House Bible study, which teaches that the Jews killed Jesus.
But Burroughs saw through Trump and threw his own words back at him, as Mediaite noted. She said his antisemitism rationale was bullshit, as Trump’s own Harvard attacks proved. Her ruling cited Trump’s post about Harvard “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students.”
Let the record show before it’s buried with The Epstein Files™ that more diplomas were granted by Harvard than by any other school to Trump’s own appointed idiots and ‘birdbrains.’ On the other hand, Trump may have a point, considering that his Harvard geniuses include War Secretary Pete Hegseth and whatever the fuck Robert Fantasist Kennedy, Jr., is.
Trump Also Killed Innocent North Koreans. Who Knew?!?
The New York Times has an amazing report up this morning that will likely reverberate through at least this afternoon.
Turns out, Pres. Donald Trump during his first term ordered yet another illegal operation, one that killed innocent, unarmed, civilian North Koreans. This being America, that part of it is fine. The illegal part is not telling Congress. Here’s the deal…
In 2019, with nuclear talks at a pretend-height or whatever, Trump wanted more intelligence, which, honestly, we all want for him. So he authorized a SEAL Team 6 mission to plant a monitor of electronic communications in North Korea.
The team fucked up. In fact, a big part of the raison d’etre for publishing the story, the Times said, was to reveal SEAL Team 6’s more than 6 fuckups. Fearing that their ride — a nuclear sub — was about to be discovered by the North Korean military, the SEALs heading for shore opened fire on a North Korean naval vessel that was actually a North Korean fishing vessel.
In fairness, who among us hasn’t made the same mistake?
Congressional leaders did learn about this in 2021 after Pres. Joe Biden took office. But literally not a single Democrat who was aware of this made sure the American people knew — before the 2024 presidential election — that in his last time at the wheel, Trump almost got us into a war with a nuclear power. Why didn’t any Democrats leak this?
Perhaps the funniest part of the Times’ hilarious romp through SEAL Team 6’s oft-covered-up up-fucks is this sentence: “It is unclear what factors Mr. Trump weighed when approving the SEAL mission.”
Some possible factors that may have been weighed:
What was on TV at the time.
Whether he was hangry.
Or gassy.
If he likes seals.
Despite (because of?) the mission’s failure, Trump had absolutely zero intelligence. And yet we still didn’t go to war. Weird how that didn’t happen.
Fine, Let’s Talk About That Redacting-Republicans-from-The-Epstein-Files™ “Report”
If you’re one of those treasured Newsfuckers who hates when TFN buzzkills a story that confirms the worst, maybe skip this story.
Okay, we alone?
As long as I have you, then: There’s no Santa Claus. Or God. Or Satan!
Also: I suspected the instant I heard it that Thursday’s story about a Justice Department (DOJ) official claiming The Epstein Files™ would have Republican names redacted was bullshit. If you missed it, serial liar and video-twister James O’Keefe got DOJ acting Deputy Chief of Special Operations Joseph Schnitt to say, on hidden camera, that the DOJ would redact those names.
Sadly, he was talking schnitt.
It should be obvious that there’s a difference between predictive speculation and informed information. What O’Keefe did not establish in his video — or he would have shared it! — was that Schnitt was in a position to know about redactions. Look at his title. Not relevant.
The video contained nothing confirming Schnitt’s involvement with The Epstein Files™. Ergo, there was no reason to believe Schnitt knew schnitt.
Getting two sources is a famous but not super-helpful rule of journalism. Perhaps more important: Get sources in a position to know what they’re talking about. Establish how.
Oh, and there’s this classic rule: If your source doesn’t know you’re recording him for James O’Keefe, thinks he’s on a date with you, and is hoping to get in your pants rather than in O’Keefe’s report, then he has motive to sell you schnitt.
Media Watch
Check it out, Newsfuckers: Even U.S. corporate media seem to be catching up to news that’s non-U.S. and non-The Fucking.
Two days after Trump announced that he’d murdered 11 people off the coast of Venezuela, at least some corporate media tried to address the fact that murdering 11 people is a “crime.”
TFN brought you that super-obvious insight on Thursday morning. Let’s check in on the Wall Street Journal and see how they did with their attempt later that day:
Now, there are many issues to be had with this. And I mean to have them all.
For one thing, “a Boat Strike”? I don’t know about you, but that sounds to me like boats boating off the job in solidarity to get higher wages. This was a human blowing-up.
Also, this headline/subheadline combo represents a particularly noxious trend of posing a question — as if it’s a question — and then acknowledging in the subhed that, nope, not a question. Let’s see if TFN can offer a handy example to demonstrate the problem…
TEASER I’m gonna have more on the Venezuelan boat strike people murder over on my Jonathan Larsen Substack for original reporting (or possibly a TFN Bonus Story). I’ll flag it here in TFN, so you won’t miss it, but if you want it hot off the metaphorical presses, you can subscribe to my JL Substack here or adjust your TFN settings to get Bonus Stories here.
Four Quickies
Billionaire John Paulson, once Pres. Donald Trump’s possible Treasury secretary, is in The Epstein Files™, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) noted on Thursday. Paulson is a big Trump and GOP donor. His presence in Jeffrey Epstein’s list of contacts was already known, but Massie on Thursday said Paulson’s been running $2 million in ads against him, just as Massie’s fighting for release of The Epstein Files™. Massie mentioned Paulson, he said, to give an idea of the kind of names we don’t yet know about because Trump is pressing the GOP not to release The Epstein Files™.
Pres. Donald Trump is asking his dwindling pool of supporters to fund him forever. Like, in the afterlife. (As an atheist and non-dualist, I do believe in the afterlife; it’s just that, since it’s after life, it involves death.) A new Trump fundraising email is titled “I want to try and get into Heaven” and asks for $15. I mean, if I thought that’s all it would take, I’d donate today. But if they really wanna raise money, they should tweak their pitch to change his destination.
Health (sic) and Human (sic) Services (sic) Secretary Robert Farting Kennedy, Jr., testified before a Senate panel on Thursday and it went about as well as anything involving him does. I have a hot take on it that I’m planning to do as a TFN Bonus Story of its own, so make sure your TFN account is set accordingly if you wanna get it for free like you can’t get a Covid shot.
It’s not just corporate media burying news of Pres. Donald Trump’s failures. TFN is doing it right now! But I do want you to know about it, because it’s yet another example of congressional Republicans breaking with Trump. The Republican-controlled House is refusing to extend Trump’s military takeover of Washington, DC, after his legal authority for it expires next week. That’s right, even Republicans in Congress want DC back the way it was with crime but also not an occupying military force.
TCB
HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN Thanks to all of you Newsfuckers who upgraded to paid subscriptions during my trip this week to take my son to start his college career and finally escape the day-to-day meddling of his parents. You helped TFN to keep going and growing while my time to devote to journalism was limited.
Now it’s on me.
There’s a lot of stuff I want to do deep dives on, plus backed-up stories in the pipeline. The reality is that TFN, each weekday, doesn’t on its own bring in enough revenue to become financially sustainable. To reach that goal requires additional pieces: enterprise reporting, investigative stuff, analysis, and Big Thoughts.
We’ve now made it through the summer Substack slowdown, however, and the number of new free Newsfuckers is ticking up. Welcome! And whether you’re new in these here newsfucking parts or you’re a long-timer, if you find that you’re making TFN a part of your day, this would be a great day to pitch in and make sure I can keep doing this forever (biological limitations may apply). E pluribus fuckem.
NEWSFUCKING IN THE WILD Catch me Mondays on The Nicole Sandler Show at 3:30pm eastern, for free, right here.
Superstar superhero writer Mark Waid joins me for a live chat on Monday, Sept. 15, at 4:30pm eastern time to talk about his Superman movie Easter egg and super-powered politics.
RESOURCES
Go get ‘em, kids! If you thought inflation would hurt Trump politically, wait’ll his own job numbers tell the truth about the job he’s doing…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Thanks to Ben Meiselas, I can’t think of the Commerce Secretary as anything other than “Howard Nutlick.”
So the poor jobs numbers may give the Fed reason to do what Trump wants: lower interest rates so his cronies can buy up assets (federal lands anyone?) with low carry costs.