<
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2025/aug/07/donald-trumps-war-on-statistics-is-an-authoritarian-attack-on-democracy-and-countries-like-australia-should-call-it-out>
"Whether it be the judicial system, universities, or health organisations,
Donald Trump cannot abide by anything that does not confirm his world view. So
it was not a shock when late last week he came for statistics – or, more
pointedly, the person in charge of the economic statistics.
On Friday, the US’s Bureau of Labor Studies released the July US employment
figures. They were not good. Just 73,000 non-farm jobs were added and annual
employment growth was the worst it has been since the GFC years (excluding the
pandemic):
https://www.datawrapper.de/_/7pL8B/
In response, Trump did what any autocrat would do when told bad news: he shot
the messenger – at least only figuratively. Trump argued that Erika McEntarfer,
the commissioner of labor statistics, had faked bad figures purely to hurt him.
And so he fired her.
But this should not be dismissed as “oh that’s just Trump”, nor should we just
sigh and say we have been in a fact-free era for nearly a decade.
Reality might be hanging on to the political debate for dear life, but this
move threatens to fling it off the cliff."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
