Transcription
Caroline Levit had a crash during yesterday's press briefing. And you know what? Not that I feel sorry for her. She chose this job at the end of the day. But I don't envy being in a position of having to defend a confused and feeble president who doesn't seem to know what's going on with economic policy, lies constantly, misunderstands endlessly, and also seems unable either to hear or parse syntactically words that he has asked. So he just spits out random noise, and then Caroline Levit is brought in to have to clean it up.
The issue facing Caroline Levit right now is what is going on with inflation numbers and jobs numbers, given that Donald Trump is firing the people responsible for these numbers when he doesn't like what he is told. He fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He's now putting in place a guy named E.J. Anthony, who is just an overtly brazen political actor. I have never said before, whether it was a Democratic president or a Republican president, I'm not sure we can trust the jobs numbers and the inflation numbers. I am now saying that because Donald Trump is putting overtly partisan actors in those roles. Caroline Levit is asked about the future of all of this. And she says, "Oh yeah, we may be suspending the job reports until we can really get it all in order." And of course, it was in order.
My question would be, where are the Epstein files?
Funding for BLS Commissioner E.J. Antony recently told Fox Business, uh, that the BLS should suspend issuing monthly job reports and only issue quarterly reports until the jobs data methodology is corrected.
So, does the—what's funny is if the methodology is bad, why are you issuing any? Like, let's give—we're still going to give bad reports, but only quarterly? That doesn't make any sense. The president disagree with that assessment that his nominee is said there, or suspending these, uh, monthly job reports, a real option here?
I think he floated the idea of possibly suspending until they can get the data and the methodology in order. Uh, and this president wants to ensure that the BLS again is putting out, uh, accurate and honest data that the American people can trust.
Since you brought up the new commissioner, uh, he holds a master's and doctor's degree in economics from Northern Illinois. He's got a doctor's degree university. He's the chief economist, uh, in the Heritage Foundation's, uh, center for the federal budget. And in addition to his work at Heritage, uh, he has multiple other roles. He's been widely renowned, uh, for his work on economic issues. He's been called before Congress to testify as an economic expert. So, he's a qualified individual, and the president trusts him to lead this important department.
I, I really want you to understand the brazen, absurd, propagandistic reality of this. If they stop the jobs rep, there's one way to interpret this: If they stop the jobs reports, the jobs reports will only come back when the books are fully cooked by E.J. and Tony. That's what's going on here.
And there was a really great, um, I, I guess I'd call it a follow-up question, even though it's from a different reporter, which is: If we are being told the job data isn't reliable, should Americans trust the inflation data? And I—this is essentially a version of what I pointed out yesterday, which is we've been told that bad—by bad, I mean not great numbers for Trump on jobs—should be ignored because they're just not accurate. Yesterday, the administration got numbers. They're, they're not good inflation numbers, but they're not yet terrible. Like, it's going up. Inflation's going up. It's now over 3% in terms of core inflation, which is higher than, but it's not like it's 6%. So, the Trump administration has come out, even though they promised to reduce prices, they've said, "Well, the, the inflation numbers are sort of looking okay." Can we even trust that?
It's a great question to Caroline. Le, just on the BLS: They collect the inflation data. Obviously, I—if the jobs data is not reliable, should Americans trust the inflation data?
Well, look, the jobs data has had massive revisions. Uh, we want to ensure that all of the data—the inflation data, the jobs data, any data point that is coming out of the BLS—is trustworthy and is accurate, which is why the president has restored new leadership at the BLS.
Not an answer. Not an answer. She sort of is alluding to, "Well, the jobs numbers have been revised too much according to Trump," which makes them inherently unreliable. And the inflation numbers, I guess she's suggesting, are more trustworthy because they haven't been revised. But historically, you don't revise inflation numbers. Inflation is a different metric than jobs. Jobs is based on a different sort of reporting, and it's just, it's a number that's compiled differently. Jobs numbers have always been revised, and there were big revisions under Biden, which they had no issue with whatsoever.
So, a pathetic, pathetic answer.
They then were able to touch on the question of this purge, a dystopian sci-fi-like purge of the homeless from Washington D.C. that Donald Trump announced earlier this week. And Levit confirms, "If homeless people refuse to go to a shelter, they will be imprisoned."
Now, there's a like a little tiny question, which is: For what crime? Let's see if Caroline answers.
Related topic. Um, regarding the president's efforts in Washington D.C., do you have any specifics about how homeless people will be dealt with, where they would be moved to? What, what does this look like?
I do. Yes. And it's an important question, so thank you for raising it. Um, the Metropolitan Police Department, with the support of the new federal agencies who have been surging on the streets of the District of Columbia, are going to enforce the laws that are already on the books here in Washington D.C. For far too long, these laws have been completely ignored, uh, and the homelessness problem has ravaged the city.
So, D.C. code 22-1307 and D.C. municipal regulation 24-100 give the Metropolitan Police Department the authority to take action, uh, when it comes to homeless encampments. So, homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services, and if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.
Again, these are pre-existing laws that are already on the books. They have not been enforced, which is part of the reason, uh, for this nationalizing of the federalizing of the National Guard to bring in this assistance for law enforcement. While we are targeting criminals and trying to remove criminals off of the streets, we also want to make D.C. safe and beautiful, and that remove—involves removing mentally disturbed individuals and homeless encampments as well.
Now, I think it's important to mention that there's a difference between removing an encampment, which I don't think there's any question as to the legality, and then some of the other techniques used to criminalize homelessness, which sometimes include selectively applied loitering laws and other aspects that we've talked about previously. But what's very clear is that they are now looking for a sort of retroactive justification, uh, for just the wholesale arrest of homeless people.
Later, we're going to look at an interview with Janine Piro where she was asked about the reasons people commit crimes. Similarly here, we really need to be thinking about the reasons why people end up homeless. That's like—this is something that the MAGAs often don't want to do. And if you want to seriously and more robustly consider solutions, when we think about undocumented immigration, you've got to consider what's going on in the home countries of people that is even leading them to try to come here. If you're trying to figure out how to deal with crime, you really should be looking at what are the determinants of crime and that put people on a path to criminal activity. Why don't we deal with that? And then similarly with homelessness, we should be considering the exact same thing. But Caroline Levit doesn't want to do that. That's not how they want to figure, figure issues out.
Finally, as you remember, Donald Trump twice said that he's going to Russia, but what he meant was he's going to Alaska. Trump was confused. Trump was disoriented. If Biden had done it, they would have demanded immediate removal from office. Caroline Levit was asked about it. Here's what she had to say.
Charlie, the president said podium yesterday twice that he was planning to go to Russia. Was that a verbal slip-up, or does he actually plan to go to Russia?
Uh, perhaps there are plans in the future to travel to Russia. Uh, and on Friday, the president will be meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska. As you—perhaps there are plans for Trump to travel to Russia.
Now, of course, when Trump two days ago said, "I'm meeting Putin in Russia this week," that was not about future plans. Trump was just confused. He's not going to Russia. He's going to Alaska. He misspoke. He was confused. They are hypocrites. And she's using the word "perhaps." "Perhaps Trump will be going to Russia"—extraordinary. It's doing some heavy lifting. The word "perhaps" is doing some heavy lifting.
But as, as poorly as she handled all of this questioning, she was asked about Donald Trump's health. And that's when it got really, really weird.
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