At what point do we stop believing?
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Wow, 177,000 — can you believe it!!?
No, I mean really, can you believe it?
Should you believe it? Why might you have some reservations about believing it?
I’m talking, of course, about the April Jobs Report, which the Department of Labor (DOL) issued Friday, showing 177,000 net new (non-farm) hires, well above expectations — a major surprise that sent the markets soaring and Donald Trump crowing.
My question is a strange one to ask because we’ve always regarded such official numbers as solid gold, unimpeachable numerical fact. You’d have to be a far-fringe conspiracy theorist to express the slightest doubt about their veracity.
My impetus for asking it anyway has largely to do with another number: 258,060,000. That’s the number of American lives that Attorney General Pam Bondi stated publicly — “Are you ready for this, media!?” — President Trump has saved, since taking office in January, by his administration’s interception of fentanyl shipments at the border. (For the record, the highest annual number of US deaths related to fentanyl use is approximately 70,000.)
That was two days before the jobs number came out; for what it’s worth, the day before that, on Tuesday, Bondi more realistically credited Trump with saving a mere 119 million American lives. Apparently that was not enough, though, because by Wednesday it was 258,060,000.
It was a good week for late-night comedy shows.
For those of you without a calculator handy, that’s three-quarters of the US population. Without Trump as our Savior, Bondi was telling us, you and I would have only a one in four chance of being alive today.
When I first saw that number I thought “Oh well, she must have misspoke, said 258 million when she meant 258 thousand.”
But no! Bondi said 258 million and she meant 258 million — and the Department of Justice (DOJ) quickly backed her up, hustling out the “formula” they used to arrive at that number. Here it is in all its higher mathematical glory:
1 kg of fentanyl * .1518 (current purity level) * 1000 (to convert to grams) / by .002 (amount needed for a deadly dose) = lethal dose of fentanyl. So, 3,400 Kg of fentanyl seized in Trump’s first 100 days 3400 * .1518 * 1000 / .002 = 258,060,000 deadly doses.
That is a direct quote from the DOJ and, yep, if you multiply 3,400 times 0.1518 times 1,000 and divide it all by 0.002, my Made in China calculator confirms that it equals 258,060,000. Arrived at by a perfectly transparent and easy-to-follow formula.
And a complete load of crap.
Unless you actually want to believe that 258,060,000 of us Americans, were it not for the quasi-divine intercession of our sainted president, would have snarfed down that fatal 2 mg of fentanyl and, having shuffled off that mortal coil, headed to a better place.
Somehow, I don’t think that’s how it works or else — correct me if I’m wrong here — given how long fentanyl has been kicking around, there wouldn’t be a single one of us left.
In fact, by my calculations — with which I won’t bore you — the US population as of yesterday would be -507,847,293*. Of course, a population of negative 507 million would have precipitated a sharp downturn in the Dow, though the bots would be doing their best to keep the markets humming.
Which brings us back to that other number — the small, reasonable one — 177,000. That number, April’s new hires, like the LSBT (Lives Saved by Trump) number, also emerges from a formula. Actually from a formula plus statistical sampling and analysis — all told, a great deal more complicated than the simple voodoo the DOJ and Bondi relied on for the LSBT.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), within the DOL, generates a whole batch of monthly numbers, the big ones being the unemployment rate (given as a percentage) and the jobs added/lost (given as a raw number, in this case +177,000). For the jobs number, BLS relies on a program known as the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey.
It’s complicated and involves: a sampling of businesses; a methodology for determining what’s a “job” (e.g., self-employment doesn’t count; folks with two jobs are counted twice); when a job is added or lost, etc.; and what the BLS refers to as an “estimation methodology.”
(For those keeping score at home, there is an alternate measure of the job market, put out by ADP Research in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. It covers the private sector and its April number was 62,000 jobs added, a sharp slowdown in hiring that led ADP chief economist Nela Richardson to comment, “Unease is the word of the day.” Just something to keep in the back of your head.)
If it’s a slow day and you’re so inclined, you can bone up on all this here. The point is that it’s all rather, well, squishy — as reflected in the fact that the BLS unemployment and jobs numbers, published the first Friday of each month, are inevitably revised a month or so later, sometimes quite dramatically. But it’s those first numbers that make a splash — one way or the other — and drive markets, consumer confidence, public opinion, approval ratings, and political and electoral dynamics.
So they’re important numbers, with a great deal riding on them, which means we all pretty much have to trust them. And for decades, right up through Friday, very few have dared to doubt them.
But then came the big LSBT whopper — 258,060,000 — and reasonable, trusting minds would be forgiven for starting to wonder.
Because of course there’s some context here. We’re in the post-truth Trumpocene, where the lies flow so thick and fast that they have become a kind of background hum, governmental Muzak.
Trump was clocked at 30,573 false or misleading statements in his first term and, after a campaign awash in them, he hit the ground running on January 20, 2025.
And this time he seems to have brought the whole of Team Trump, down to the batboys, up to speed.
Mathematical modeling and calculations — as illustrated by, among other debacles, Trump’s chart of tariff rates — seem not to be their strong suit.
The one thing that everyone knows will not be tolerated is disloyalty. And they also know the definition of disloyalty extends to bad news. Which might often come in the form of bad numbers.
But beyond sloppiness and incompetence, there is this: Everyone in this Sun King’s orbit knows what he wants and needs, and everyone knows that the fate of the whole MAGA enterprise, and their own place in it, rides on Trump’s success and popularity.
A lot of screwing up will be tolerated (see, e.g., Pete Hegseth). The one thing that everyone knows will not be tolerated is disloyalty. And they also know the definition of disloyalty extends to bad news. Which might often come in the form of bad numbers.
You can, I hope, see where this is going. There’s a lot of pressure — to produce good news, to suppress bad news. And numbers.
As for the 177,000 jobs, you might object that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is (or was) no fire-breathing MAGA, and you’d be right. Chavez-DeRemer has been described as a “mainstream Republican,” and even had a modestly pro-union background — which she pretty much disavowed, however, in the course of her confirmation hearings earlier this year.
But she is on Team Trump now and, no less than Bondi or press secretary Karoline Leavitt, knows what her marching orders are, probably down to the letter.
Accordingly, she was out there Friday in fine Trumpian fettle, out-crowing the crow: Asked for her take on the jobs report, “The Golden Age is here!” she gushed.
From a meh jobs report to The Golden Age!
Forgive Chavez-DeRemer for the ridiculous overspin — she’s only trying to keep her job. As is everyone at CES, BLS, DOL, with that chainsaw idling in the background. Just about everyone — everyone who’s left, that is — knows the game.
The Nazis had a phrase for the way all those who served Adolf Hitler came to know his mind and anticipate his wants, such that they divined and fulfilled his will of their own accord: auf den Führer hinarbeiten, or “working towards the Fuhrer.” We’ve witnessed evidence of a similar phenomenon — largely absent, to his great frustration, in Trump’s first term — rapidly developing in his second.
It is no longer, in the context of Trump’s relationship with facts and truth and his expectations of his subordinates, unreasonable or unduly irreverent to query government-produced indicators we have always regarded as gospel.
To be clear, I am not claiming that the April jobs number is cooked. Rather that it is no longer, in the context of Trump’s relationship with facts and truth and his expectations of his subordinates, unreasonable or unduly irreverent to query government-produced indicators we have always regarded as gospel.
This numerical life-preserver will last a month. Consensus expectations are that both the markets and the broader economy will suffer this summer and beyond, as Trump’s trade policies take their toll. Many are forecasting a recession or worse — while those who believe we will avoid one generally rely on, wait for it, a strong jobs market in support of their prediction.
More jobs numbers, inflation numbers, all sorts of numbers will be relied on to tell the story and paint the picture.
What should be our response if this future brings a succession of numerical life-preservers and fantastical indicators? At what point do we stop believing?
Donald Trump did not save 258,060,000 American lives. You can’t call that “spin.” It’s 250 million miles past spin. You can call it “bullshit,” a bald-faced lie.
The question is, are we now in a world where, to take our cue from Dylan Thomas, “after the first lie there is no other?” Does each lie make the next one that much easier to swallow — that much closer, in our collective perception, to truth?
The numbers we’ll be seeing from this administration will almost certainly be a lot more “plausible” on their face than the nonsensical 258,060,000 LSBT.
Does that mean we can trust them? When they come from the same, vast, lie-spewing maw?
How do we check them? How do we prevent Trump and his loyalty-tested team from creating their own numerical reality to keep their own political reality afloat, to perpetuate their power?
Welcome to the post-truth Trumpocene. Everyone grab your calculator. And your salt shaker.
* Actually, I just made that one up; the real number is way bigger.
