These are statistical changes based on this antiquated system, and it's just a big leap to go to rigged. And then it also, Mr. President, it makes anyone you pick is going to be the critics are going to say, hey, he's picking a guy that's going to give him the or a gal that's giving him [00:00:16] the numbers that he wants. CNBC's Joe Kernen really found himself in a difficult position today as he was interviewing Donald Trump, and as he was essentially forced to do some corrections [00:00:32] of statements that Trump was making. Now, why was that difficult for him to do? He's a huge Trump fan, huge Trump supporter. Typically, he provides cover for anything that Trump does on CNBC. But in this case, he had to correct Trump's, you know, statements in regard [00:00:48] to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, his decision to fire the commissioner for BLS, and more. So Kiernan seems skeptical of the idea that it would be possible for the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner to rig unemployment numbers. [00:01:05] So let's hear what he had to say. Let's hear him make his case and how well Trump responded to that. Elaine Chao was on yesterday, and I know she was. I think she was labor secretary for eight years under Bush two. [00:01:21] And she was your transportation secretary as well. And she said, you know, the commissioner doesn't really even get involved with the actual minutia of putting all these things together. And there's no way that that it could have been that she could have chosen to rig [00:01:37] these numbers to make them look bad. Anyone you pick is going to be the critics are going to say, hey, he's picking a guy that's going to give him the or a gal that's giving him the numbers that he wants. So it undermines confidence in the system to some extent. Well, I think when somebody says the commissioner is not involved, I don't want [00:01:55] to get into any arguments with anybody. Why should I? She's a very nice woman. But when they say that the, you know, that nobody was involved, that it wasn't political. Give me a break. I mean, look, I'm not an expert on the inner workings [00:02:12] of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but really, the BLS commissioner isn't involved in the numbers. I don't know if I buy that, to be quite frank. But also, I know that Trump fired her for political reasons because he didn't like the revisions of the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, [00:02:28] and he is in the wrong for doing that. I believe she needs a PhD for that position. That sounds amazing. But the point there is that she has that person has to have impeccable credentials, but there's a reason for that. So no, as far as all the articles I've ever read about it, they she does [00:02:47] she doesn't produce the numbers, but do they present the numbers to her, the statisticians, etc., who did it? And does she then authorize it? Yes, that's her job and that's why she needs to be an expert in this field. It can't be just somebody off the street, because you need to understand how those numbers work. [00:03:03] So she might not prepare them, but she has responsibility for them. Okay, so, look, I'm a little bit surprised that he did a fact check on Trump. Yeah, he got annoyed about it at some point. By the way. It seemed like there was a producer off camera giving him the fact checks, [00:03:20] and he got annoyed and said, oh, I got to fact check you. You know, I usually didn't have to do this with Biden, which I thought was interesting. Are you see that? Okay. But on the Bureau of Labor Statistics that one CNBC does care about. Okay. So the election, they're like, oh yeah, you stole it, or you're claiming it [00:03:36] was stolen and you're an obvious liar. Okay, I'll do a fact check. God damn it. - Is it going to hurt the markets? - Right? Yeah. Exactly. Right. So they don't really care about it. But for Bureau of Labor Statistics, they need to be able to. The markets need to be able to rely on actual numbers. If they're if you bring in a political figure there and they're just making up [00:03:53] numbers to make the president look good. Then the market then or. Yeah, the markets are in the dark then, and they don't have the proper information to make investments. And they hate that. Right. So you can tell in CNBC's reaction the political correctness is coming [00:04:10] from Trump, not from the head of BLS. So look, Trump did keep pushing this idea that the revised jobs reports, and the latest jobs report pertaining to what happened with our economy in July [00:04:26] were essentially rigged in Biden's favor. Which, you know, the data does say otherwise. We're going to get to that in just a minute. But before we do, let's hear more from Trump, especially as he complains about how everything is unfair and rigged against him. [00:04:43] Take a look. Just days before the election, they put out numbers that it was like the country was on fire. It was doing so well. And then they did a revision about, two weeks later, and the revision was down [00:05:00] by almost 900,000 jobs. - You remember that? - Those were benchmark numbers, though. That happens. They do that. They do that twice a year. And it reconciles the monthly figures with like the overall numbers. And it was a big number. And obviously. [00:05:16] - The numbers. - Were. Were the numbers were rigged. Biden wasn't doing well. He was doing poorly. They announced these phenomenal numbers two days before the election and a little bit before that. Always these great numbers. After I won the election, I said too big to rig, but after I won the election, then [00:05:32] they announced a downward number, in other words, to bring them back to reality. And I said, wow, supposing I would have lost, I would have blamed that and people would have said I was a conspiracy theorist. Not true. Okay, so we looked into this. [00:05:48] I want to give you the actual numbers so you know that, you know, the Bureau of Labor Statistics wasn't, you know, cooking the books, cooking the numbers to make Biden look bad. And Trump, I mean, Biden looked good and Trump looked bad. So a month before the election, the BLS jobs announcement on October 4th showed [00:06:07] growth of 254,000 jobs for September. But the BLS announcement on November 1st, right before the election, showed weak growth of just 12,000 jobs in October. And they adjusted the earlier months down. Yeah. [00:06:23] So, like if you're running for president on November 1st, they released those that information that is very bad news for you right. So if this was all a giant conspiracy to help Biden, that is the very last thing you would do on November 1st right before the election. [00:06:38] BLS, by the way, stated at the time that strike activity, hurricanes hitting the US, that kind of stuff led to lower employment. BLS also said the August and September figures were revised down by 112,000. [00:06:53] So conservatives pounced on the bad numbers. And I'm sure Trump remembers that because this was all happening in the lead up to the election. A Fox News headline called the report dismal and said it gives Trump last minute political ammunition to fire at Harris. [00:07:10] The Trump campaign at the time said the jobs report was a catastrophe that showed how Harris broke our economy. And ironically, a month after the election, the October figure was actually revised upward. So complete opposite of what Trump is claiming here. [00:07:27] So look, he said there, you know, if I had lost, I would have said this happened and they would have called me a conspiracy theorist. No, that's because you are a conspiracy theorist. You came up with a conspiracy theory, even though the facts actually help you. [00:07:42] Yeah. And including what he's crying about. He's such a. - Okay, it gets better. - Okay, hold on just real quick. What he's crying about now is, oh, the job numbers were low this month and they revised the last two months downward. But that means they had to revise them because they had overly inflated them [00:07:59] in the last two months while you were president, just in time for you to pass your tax cuts for the rich and your tariffs, etc., right? Oh, conveniently. So. If there was a conspiracy in both occasions, it was to help you. But I don't believe there was a conspiracy because I'm not a loon like Donald Trump, [00:08:17] which I'll get back to now. My favorite part of this entire debacle with the Bureau of Labor Statistics and their jobs report, is that lower employment numbers gives Trump the perfect argument [00:08:32] that he needs to convince Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates. And for whatever reason, it seems like he's unable to connect the dots. And Kiernan mentions this in the context of this interview. [00:08:47] Let's see how Trump responded to it. Which number do you believe at this point? Because if you noticed suddenly the chances of what you've wanted for months and argued for for months, the chances of a rate cut soared because of these numbers, do you not believe the current numbers? [00:09:04] Because they're playing right into what you want the Fed and Jay Powell to do? They're not horrible. As you said. But you know, perhaps with the tariffs some businesses delayed some some spending. Some consumers may have been less certain about the future. [00:09:20] So maybe we're seeing a slight slowdown in labor. But you're going to get exactly what you want based on these numbers. Which ones do you believe. Do you not believe the revised numbers either? It's not what I want. I don't want that. I wanted it a year ago. I wanted it a long time ago. Jay Powell is a highly political. [00:09:38] And I think, you know, I call him too late, Jerome. Too late. Powell. Oh my God, that's it. That's my commentary. - Jake, back to you. - Okay, so two things here, guys. There is one thing that was disturbing that we mentioned in yesterday's show, [00:09:54] which is that, apparently, Wall Street got some of these numbers 30 minutes before the rest of the public did. So if there is any conspiracy at all that see, the job numbers going up and down happens all the time. That is not abnormal. That happens under Republicans and Democrats, right. [00:10:11] Wall Street getting the numbers first. Never happens. Okay, so that was a giant irregularity, right? So if you were looking if I was the president, I'd say I want to know why that happened. Is it somebody inside the Bureau of Labor Statistics [00:10:27] that leaked it for financial purposes? Because that would be massive insider trading, huge problem. Right? And then if you say to me, hey, the numbers were greatly inflated, right? As they were trying to pass the tax cuts for the rich and for corporations. Well, then I would say, wait, are those two things connected? [00:10:45] Normally they go up and down, but with this giant irregularity. Now I'm a little bit worried that someone's trying to cook the books to pass the legislation that helps Wall Street, right? But that's Trump's bill. And so he again, if he's saying that happened, that would be totally [00:11:03] counterproductive to what he wants. Which then leads to the final point and the most important point here. So look, the folks on the left already know this. And a big percentage of independents know this. The MAGA guys or whoever Trump voters, you're the last man standing on this. [00:11:19] Okay. The last of the Mohicans. Trump is a buffoon. Okay. I know you don't believe that. I know you think he's a hero, or some of you do. And some of you are beginning to realize Epstein files subservience to Israel. Giant deficits. That maybe he's not the guy you thought he was, right. [00:11:35] But he doesn't understand simple concepts, and he refuses to do just a tiny bit of hard work. It's not even that hard. Just a tiny bit of homework to understand things. If the job numbers are low, that helps your cause in cutting interest [00:11:52] rates, which stimulates the economy. That's what Donald Trump wants. But the job numbers come in and. - I don't like it. - Because why? Because it affected his ego and he's a dumbass. Well, okay. I think the problem with Trump and I see this problem play out in almost [00:12:09] every political issue he's involved in. His paranoia of people trying to destroy him politically, like, blinds him to reality. Right. - I get it. - But it just does. He thinks everyone is out to get him. But it's like you're president. [00:12:25] You're the president. Okay. No one's out to get you. Democrats tried. They failed on multiple occasions. But at this point, you want lower interest rates. It's very obvious that now it's going to happen in September. - But like, he's not connecting the dots. - No, no. [00:12:42] No. Sorry. I'm going to revise what I said earlier. A lot of Democrats don't understand this either. And this is going to be like by the end of Trump's term. This is going to be another redemption where people are like, oh, it turns out all the times I theorize about his strategy, there was no strategy. [00:12:58] Like when he has strategy, I tell you, like when he went to go figure out what do the voters want? Credit where credit is due back this back in 2015 and earlier before he ran for president and he tested his messages. Hey, do I go pro-immigrant anti-immigrant and decided. So that strategy credit where credit is due. [00:13:15] But on stuff like this, he's dumb. He doesn't understand that the job numbers being low goes to what he wants lower interest rates. He doesn't understand that. If you look, if you're a plumber, you might not understand that because you didn't get a degree in economics. [00:13:31] But if you're the president and you want lower interest rates when the bad job numbers come out, you should immediately think, ooh, silver lining. I don't love that it's bad job numbers, but that's going to help me pressure Powell. But he doesn't understand super simple concepts like that [00:13:46] because he's dumb and never does homework and has no strategy other than. Chum chum, chum chum chum chum, chum chum. Numbers are low. I don't like that. Okay, fed. Job numbers are high. So the Fed's not going to lower rates. Job numbers. Good. Fed bad. Evil. [00:14:01] Yeah he's an idiot. He doesn't know anything. So I know if you're some portion of MAGA or you or you're some portion of Democrats who think he's a secret, incredible strategist, you won't believe me until at some point you go, oh, right, he said, the disinfectant inside your body. [00:14:17] - Clorox to cure Covid. - He's a moron. - He's a moron of epic proportions. - And here's the hurricane. I drew it with a magic marker. - He's a. - Moron. He doesn't understand simple economic concepts. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. [00:14:35] Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.