MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is worried the Trump Administration may “cook the books” to make the economy look healthier than it actually is.
Maddow on Wednesday night said President Donald Trump has made a number of decisions since reentering the White House on Jan. 20 that “have potentially disastrous economic consequences,” without mentioning specific examples.
Earlier in her monologue, Maddow pointed to an underwhelming jobs report and the stock market taking a hit, following the president’s plan to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China; on Thursday, President Trump said the tariffs on Mexico would be paused.
To make the economy appear healthy, Maddow suggested, Trump officials could look to change how key economic indicators are calculated. She said that is on the table after Elon Musk last week said a “more accurate” way to calculate GDP would be to exclude government spending.
“If they are going to cook the books so that economic indicators like unemployment numbers and economic growth and whether or not we’re in a recession or a depression just don’t mean anything anymore — because they’ve recalculated them with special Trump numbers — what does that mean for our ability to know the truth about what’s going on, and what does it mean for us economically?” Maddow asked.
She then brought on Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Joe Biden, who said he has not liked what he has seen from President Trump “one bit.”
On a related note, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday pushed back on criticism the president and Musk have received for cuts to the federal bureaucracy. Leavitt shared a clip from CNN, citing a new CBS/YouGov poll, that showed 51% of Americans “approve of Trump trying to cut staff at govt. agencies.”
You can watch Maddow’s full segment on her concerns with the Trump Administration, above.
