Numbers that make President Trump look like a loser drive him insane.
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Friday, President Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, because he was bummed by the low job creation numbers in the July jobs report. This move is a sign that Trump, the authoritarian, will corrupt government reporting numbers to avoid embarrassment and make him feel like a success.
Government statistics are relied upon by academia, industry, and governments around the world. The reputation of America is diminished if people can’t trust the data that the US government provides.
Trump has been inflicting his insecurity about the size of things since Sean Spicer falsely claimed, in his first official press conference, that Trump’s inauguration had drawn the “largest audience to ever to witness an inauguration, period — both in person and around the globe.”
When COVID-19 first hit, Trump didn’t want to allow a cruise ship with COVID-stricken passengers to dock because “I like the numbers being where they are” — this was when total US COVID-19 fatalities stood at 19.
Throughout his time in politics, Trump has been obsessed with his numbers being the largest (or occasionally, as in the illustration above, the smallest) and the best. He monitors media ratings, wealth sizes, hand sizes, crowd sizes, political polls, flag poles, election results, and more. Meanwhile Americans suffer whatever reality the president is trying to obscure.
While you’re here enjoying DonkeyHotey’s latest cartoon, please take a moment to read these articles on related topics:
- Faced with a Dismal Jobs Report, Trump Finds Comfort in a Conspiracy Theory
- A Tale of Two Numbers: Lives Saved by Trump and the April Jobs Report
- Other DonkeyHotey cartoons
The cartoon above was created by DonkeyHotey for WhoWhatWhy from these images: Donald Trump caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), body (Jessica Johnson / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), Stephen Miller caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), button (Fabián Alexis / Wikimedia – CC BY-SA 3.0), and screen (cottonbro studio / Pexels).
