No Evidence Jobs Data was ‘Manipulated’
President Donald Trump’s chief budget officer claimed — without any evidence — that “the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers” to make the nation’s unemployment rate “look smaller.”
Asked for evidence, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer also offered none. Spicer replied that Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, was “clearly referring to Obamacare.” That’s false.
Mulvaney was clearly talking about employment data when he made his remarks March 12 on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Host Jake Tapper played a video clip from Feb. 9, 2016 in which Trump called the unemployment rate “phony numbers.” At the time, the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent.
“Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment,” Trump said. “The number is probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42
