The numbers were bad. There were just 22,000 new jobs added to the economy. Here’s how the Washington Postsummarized things:
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported fewer jobs in downward revisions to June job creation, in a warning sign about President Donald Trump’s tougher tariffs and immigration enforcement. In August, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3 percent.”
Fox Business is interested in shielding Trump from the consequences of his terrible choices. So morning host Stuart Varney asked the US secretary of labor if Trump’s tariffs “have anything to do with this slowing job market?”
Unsurprisingly, Lori Chavez-DeRemer lied.
“Tariffs are working … How do I know this? Because companies are reinvesting in the American workforce. We’re seeing the consumer confidence up. We’re seeing real wages up. Blue-collar boom? I talk about it. It seems like something that is rhetoric but it’s not because that’s what we’re seeing on the ground blue-collar wages are up 1.4 percent. Unemployment is still holding steady. Statistically, it’s nonexistent. That’s the key to the American people is that we’re leaning in. We’re doing everything we can for this workforce and now this is one more thing that the Fed can do. And [Federal Reserve Chairman] Jerome Powell hasn’t done his job and .. that’s why [Trump has] been so vocal about this. We need those interest rates down.
As I said, Chavez-DeRemer lied, but she lied a lot.
Wages are not up, blue-collar or otherwise. Companies are not “reinvesting in the American workforce.” They are bribing Trump to be the exception to his import tax. Unemployment is not “nonexistent,” statistically or otherwise. It literally increased to its highest level since October 2021, when America was still in the throes of the pandemic.
If “tariffs are working,” they’re not working for men.
They were supposed to restore the former glory of the American working man by bringing back factory jobs. But “men have lost 56,000 jobs over the past four months, with women gaining 76 percent of the jobs in 2025 (compared to around 50 percent normally),” economist Mike Konczal said.
“Trump's effort to bring back men jobs with tariffs has backfired spectacularly, causing those industries to shrink.”
But of course the biggest lie is the one out in the open. Could tariffs possibly have something to do with a slowing job market? Yes! In fact, that’s exactly what everyone expected would happen after Trump imposed — without Congress and without law — a massive national sales tax. They would eat into profits and bring hiring to a crawl.
And since the president is the main cause of the slowdown, his administration has the incentive to hide that fact, especially to find someone else to blame for it. That’s why Chavez-DeRemer spends so much of her Fox time accusing Powell of dropping the ball.
Powell has already said an interest rate cut is likely. He said that before today’s job report. And he said a rate cut was needed because of the “downside risks to employment,” which I take to be bureaucratese for “Trump’s tariffs are killing off jobs so we gotta juice the economy.”
Point is that Powell was already signalling to do what the president has been demanding, but that’s inconvenient timing for Chavez-DeRemer, who was tasked with finding a scapegoat in order to hide from Trump’s supporters that he, and he alone, is the cause of the problem.
And because protecting Trump from the consequences of his terrible choices is the goal of his administration, no one is going to say boo after it’s clear a rate cut had practically no effect on jobs. Mike Konczal also said today that employers have been pricing a cut into their planning. By the time it happens, it may not make a lick of difference.
Our second item is a local news report by KATV reporter Andrew Mobley on the reason why Arkansas farmers are facing catastrophe.
The reason is Trump, but no one blames him. Here’s Mobley:
“Almost everything that could go wrong for Arkansas farmers did go wrong this year and it’s so bad that many are facing bankruptcy or even the closure of farms that have been passed down for generations.
“A dismal global market, and plunging commodity prices, mean there’s little to no hope of breaking even for many farmers, even as sky high input cost rise, because of inflation and now tariffs” (my bolding).
“Though President Trump’s big beautiful bill provided them much-needed update to safety-net subsidies for farmers, they won’t see those federal dollars until late next year, by which time some have projected that as many as one-fourth or even one-third of Arkansas farmers will face bankruptcy or be forced to leave the business.”
Mobley’s report covers a meeting between farmers and their US representatives. Not one of the farmers states the obvious: that they are facing the wall because Trump put them against it, and he put them against it because they supported him, and they supported him despite knowing that his tariffs would put them against the wall.
And now, because Arkansas farmers cannot implicate the president, or the Republicans in the Congress, without also implicating themselves, they are reduced to pleading with them for some sort of federal bailout, which is to say, begging their kidnappers to pay ransom.
That said, it’s not often you see the most salient feature of American politics — whiteness — stand out so perfectly formed in the wild.
“Real Americans” (ie, white farmers “who put food on your table”) are transparently asking to be rescued from the dire consequences of their terrible choices by their savior, but instead of being held accountable for them, as anyone who is not white most certainly would be, they are portrayed as victims of circumstances to be pitied, not condemned.
“Until the federal government steps in to save them, they have had no one to turn to but God,” reporter Mobley said. “It’s hard not to be moved by the cries of the people who put food on your table.”
Actually, it’s not that hard.
And finally, and once again, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
I have talked about him a lot, but I wanted to end on this note: During three hours of testimony Thursday, before a Senate committee, that man fell to pieces under the slightest pressure.
This is not a small concern. Kennedy is the top public health official in the country. Boil down everything and the most important thing about him is that the public trusts him to act in everyone’s best interest.
Most people don’t know much about medicine, about science and about policy, but everyone can size up a man as trustworthy or not. And I don’t know how Kennedy didn’t fail that assessment in every way.
Kennedy could not be corrected on matters of fact, forget about matters of public health, without becoming defensive, petulant and emotional. He grunted. He groaned. He wiggled nervously in his chair. He rolled his eyes. He scowled at United States senators. I could go on.
Watch the clip between Kennedy and US Senator Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico. Pay attention to Lujan’s face.
Do you see a man who can be trusted?