I. The Battle Over Facts
When Donald Trump fired Dr. Kristine Joy Suh, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after a disappointing July jobs report, it wasn’t merely a personnel decision—it was a sharp break with precedent. Suh’s removal upended decades of tradition in which BLS commissioners, regardless of who appointed them, were shielded from political retaliation to preserve statistical integrity. In his second term, Trump has made it clear that data isn’t merely information to be reported—it’s a narrative to be controlled. If the numbers align with his message, they’re hailed as proof of success. If they don’t, they’re dismissed as fake—or worse, subversive.
This shift signals more than a partisan impulse—it marks the erosion of institutions designed to uphold objective truth. For decades, federal statistics have anchored democratic governance, offering policymakers, markets, and the public a shared factual baseline. Trump’s approach upends that legacy, promoting the idea that data should serve political ends rather than public understanding.
The war on truth isn’t new, but under Trump, it has escalated into a sustained campaign against independent information. This is no longer just about spin; it’s about restructuring government to control the public’s understanding of social reality. At stake is whether democracy can function at all without a foundation of facts.
II. Data as Narrative: When Numbers Tell a Political Story
Presidents have always tried to spin the numbers. But Trump has gone further—casting doubt not just on interpretations but on the legitimacy of the data itself. During his first term, he routinely dismissed unfavorable jobs reports, distorted trade figures, and undermined the Federal Reserve’s credibility. In his second term, this distrust has hardened into policy: statistical professionals are fired, and institutions are reshaped to serve partisan objectives.
This tactic mirrors authoritarian regimes. Argentina manipulated inflation statistics for years. China’s economic numbers are widely viewed as political theater. The consequences in both cases are well known: investors hesitate, policy flounders, and public trust collapses. Without reliable data, no one—from executives to voters—can make informed decisions.
Trump’s economic storytelling follows this pattern. He claimed to have created “7 million jobs,” despite a slowdown in job growth compared to the Obama years. According to a July 2020 FactCheck.org report, 7.8 million jobs had actually been lost since Trump took office, including 274,000 manufacturing jobs and 7,100 coal mining jobs. Meanwhile, a low unemployment rate disguised stagnant wages and shrinking labor force participation.
These distortions are reinforced by conspiracy rhetoric. Trump and his allies have accused career civil servants of being part of a “deep state.” In 2019, he even blamed the Federal Reserve for supposedly using flawed data to suppress economic growth. In his second term, that rhetoric has justified a sweeping purge and restructuring of federal statistical agencies.
The infrastructure for producing trustworthy data still exists—but its foundations are being chipped away. If people stop trusting official statistics, even accurate ones lose their power. And when truth becomes negotiable, democracy begins to rot—not in a dramatic collapse, but in slow, unnoticed decay.
III. How U.S. Economic Data Is Supposed to Work
For generations, the United States has been the global gold standard for independent economic data. This credibility relies on institutional safeguards that keep politics at bay.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys about 60,000 households and 120,000 businesses each month to report on jobs, wages, and labor force dynamics. These processes are governed by strict scientific protocols and carried out by nonpartisan professionals. The same holds true for the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and other statistical arms of government.
Equally vital is the release protocol: data is published on a rigid schedule—without political preview or interference. Agencies disclose their methodologies, acknowledge margins of error, and correct mistakes publicly. Independent economists and journalists vet the results. These checks are not ceremonial—they’re essential.
The system has withstood pressure before. In 2020, the Census Bureau resisted attempts to manipulate its count of undocumented immigrants. But what once required vigilance now requires urgent defense.
This year, Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) executed a mass purge of federal employees. Over 200,000 workers—many of them statisticians and data analysts—were fired. Elon Musk briefly led the “agency” (it was never officially authorized by Congress), claiming efficiency as the goal. But internal watchdogs saw something else: a targeted dismantling of statistical capacity.
The results are already visible. Survey sizes are shrinking, data processing is slower, and regional offices—especially in underserved areas—are closing. The result is a federal data system that’s less accurate, less comprehensive, and more susceptible to distortion.
This isn’t an abstract threat. When the numbers fail, the system fails. Legislators can’t budget. Businesses can’t invest. Voters can’t judge performance. Without trusted data, democracy becomes guesswork. And once trust erodes, restoring it is far more difficult than sustaining it.
We don’t need a scenario of outright falsification to sound the alarm. Eroding staffing, politicizing leadership, and slashing oversight are enough to poison the well. In today’s fractured environment, even a whisper of doubt can be weaponized.
Defending public data may seem technical, even dull. But it’s fundamental to safeguarding democracy itself. If we can’t trust the numbers, what’s left to guide policy, accountability, or civic debate? Truth is infrastructure. And in an era when power seeks to bend reality, that infrastructure must be defended.
A democracy cannot function in the dark—though you wouldn’t know it from the Washington Post, which once emblazoned a similar phrase as a slogan during Trump’s first term, only to quietly retire it when the marketing calculus changed. At a time when media vigilance is essential, walking away from that commitment accelerates the erosion of facts. The truth, inconvenient or not, still matters.
Robert Cropf is a professor of political science at Saint Louis University.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.