"To President Trump, the veracity of statistics and scorekeepers can turn on a dime. When data works in his favor, he praises, repeats and often exaggerates the figures. When the numbers on crime or the economy run counter to his narrative, they are frequently deemed fake, phony and a fraud. In his second term, he has escalated attacks on independent data, including firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after an unfavorable jobs report,"
"Mr. Trump cast reports of unemployment below 4 percent as phony at a South Dakota rally. Despite Mr. Trump's claim of misleading metrics, the agency did not change its unemployment rubric. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases six measures of unemployment and has long designated one the number of people who have been searching for a job for four weeks as the official rate."
President Trump alternately amplifies favorable government statistics and denounces inconvenient figures as fake or fraudulent. In his second term, he has intensified actions against independent data, including firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after an unfavorable jobs report, misrepresenting vaccine evidence, and halting data collection on climate change, bird flu and food insecurity. Those actions undermine public confidence in long-standing statistical sources that inform policy. A White House spokeswoman asserted a commitment to accurate public data and criticized government data shortcomings. Mr. Trump specifically attacked Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment measures before later praising the agency's reports.
Read at www.nytimes.com
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