WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump unexpectedly summoned reporters to the Oval Office on Thursday to present them with charts that he says show the US economy is solid following a jobs report last week that raised red flags and led to the Republican firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Joining Trump to talk about the economy was Stephen Moore, a senior visiting fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and the co-author of the 2018 book “Trumponomics.”
Flipping through a series of charts on an easel, Moore sought to elevate Trump’s performance as president and diminish the economic track record of former President Joe Biden. Trump stood next to Moore and interjected with approvals.
The moment in the Oval Office spoke to the president’s hopes to reset the narrative of the US economy. While the stock market has been solid, job growth has turned sluggish and inflationary pressures have risen in the wake of Trump imposing a vast set of new tariffs, which are taxes on imports.
Moore said he phoned Trump because he put together some data that shows he was correct to dismiss Erika McEntarfer as the head of the BLS. He noted that’s because reports from the BLS had overestimated the number of jobs created during the last two years of Biden’s term by 1.5 million.
