Watching the Trump Administration inevitably reminds me of the brutal Soviet government, which insistently saw everything through the lens of politics, even to the extent of attaching political officers to military units. Now, I’m not saying that’s literally happening here, not at all, but this Steve Benen report on Maddowblog concerning the upcoming release of employment figures, until now a source of joy for the Trump Administration, sent up red flags for me:
Ahead of the next report, which will be released next week, the Trump administration is reportedly asking states not to release their own preliminary tallies. The New York Times reported, “In an email sent Wednesday, the Labor Department instructed state officials to only ‘provide information using generalities to describe claims levels (very high, large increase)’ until the department releases the total number of national claims next Thursday.”
It’s not yet clear if state officials will go along.
It sure sounds to me like political management of what is simply a harsh reality.
Look, many readers will just shrug and claim a Democratic Administration would have done the same thing, and perhaps, under some hypothetical Democrats, it would have. But that’s just a form of the discredited argument called uh-whataboutism, which I find more and more reasons to ignore.
One of the lovely things about democracies is that, when properly run, people can learn to trust the government. This President personally has 16,000+ non-distinct lies, prevarications, and boasts to his name, and an Administrative record full of shame when it comes to foreign relations (migrant children in cages, extortion of foreign leaders, toadying to other foreign leaders), etc etc. Most Americans don’t trust him.
So when the Labor Department issues “instructions” to state officials, which I doubt it has any legal authority to do so, to hold back on details of their State’s employment situation, I have to think this is going to be all about the spin.
If Trump and his Administration had a record of honest dealing with the electorate, then we wouldn’t see this, and we wouldn’t have to consider whether or not we should simply disregard the upcoming release of the numbers as being possibly fallacious or whatever. We could simply say, Yes, it’s the COVID-19 response causing this, and it’s just some pain we’ll have to bear, and it’s good to see the Administration is trying to help those who’ve lost jobs.
Trump could have so easily spun it to his advantage in the upcoming elections. But, instead, he lies through his teeth constantly. This is what liars reap.
