He shot the messenger. The monthly jobs report showed just 73,000 jobs in July, with big reductions to May's and June's numbers, so Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, casting aspersions on her in a social media post, calling her a “Biden appointee” and claiming, falsely, that she played games with the numbers.
The message to every single government employee is clear.
If the numbers, the outcomes, or anything else look bad for Trump, fudge it or
risk losing your job. It’s all about personal loyalty, which comes as no
surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Still, this is 1984-level
stuff.
McEntarfer is an economist, a data person, with a Ph.D.
The New York Times reported that she had broad bipartisan support when
the Senate confirmed her to the position in 2024 in an 86-8 vote, which included yeas from then-Senators JD Vance
and Marco Rubio.
She had worked in the Census Bureau during both
Republican and Democratic administrations for 20 years before going to
Treasury. That’s not the resume of an ideologue. But Trump doesn’t care about
people who’ve worked hard to build their careers as public servants. He just
wants to look good, whether he’s doing good or not. So McEntarfer had to go.
If you’ve already started reading George Orwell’s 1984 for our book club this month, this story really resonates.
Our timing with reading the book is impeccable. It’s almost as though Trump is
reading the book too, but reading it as a guidance manual, not a cautionary
tale.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that “The Smithsonian’s National
Museum of American History in July removed references to President Donald
Trump’s two impeachments from an exhibit display. A person familiar with the
exhibit plans, who was not authorized to discuss them publicly, said the change
came about as part of a content review that the Smithsonian agreed to undertake
following pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director.”
Rewriting history is Orwellian to the core.
Breathtakingly, shockingly so. The fact remains that even though the Senate
refused to convict on either occasion, Donald Trump was impeached twice, the
only president that has happened to during a single term in office.
The first time was for attempting to use much-needed
security aid that Congress had voted to send to Ukraine as a quid pro quo to
obtain an announcement from that country’s brand-new leader at the time,
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that Joe Biden was under investigation in that country for
corruption. The second impeachment was in connection with January 6. That
is the history of our nation, which nothing can change.
But in the novel 1984, facts are not a
barrier. Rewriting history is a central tenet of the totalitarian regime,
carried out by the Ministry of Truth. I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t
read that far yet, but life seems to be imitating art right now, and it’s a
compelling sign that Trump does not mean to limit himself to the powers the
Constitution assigns to a president. This is a time to be driving that point
home with friends who still haven’t caught on, and we are going to have a lot
to talk about as we read the book. I’m signing up some great guests to join us
throughout the month.
But there’s a little good news, or at least a silver
lining in this. The Washington Post reported that following its story, the
Smithsonian issued a statement that said, “a future and updated exhibit will
include all impeachments.”
Their excuse for why the removed mention of Trump for an
exhibit that referred to the impeachments of Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson,
along with a mention that Richard Nixon would have been impeached had he not
resigned, was nonsensical: “Because the other topics in this section had not
been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case
back to its 2008 appearance.” But it’s plain that coverage by the press and
outrage by the media still matter.
So, as Trump prepares to erase the truth and write his
own version of the country’s past and present, our job is to stay informed and
express our anger and disgust. Orwell wrote, “He who controls the past controls
the future. He who controls the present controls the past." Trump controls
the present and is trying to change the past. He’s also, as with the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, trying to change the present in hopes he can continue to
control the future. It’s a dark moment.
When Trump took control of the Kennedy Center, firing the
Board and appointing himself, art and theater fought back. If you haven’t seen
it already, watch “One Gay More.” We can all fight back, too. Trump’s efforts
to change the past and the present are transparent, and the right answer is the
one these artists took: to make fun of it, to laugh at it, to ridicule it, and
to ridicule the man who thinks we will fall for it. Today it’s jobs
numbers; tomorrow it will be the Epstein files or whatever else Trump
fears at the moment. Let’s be loud. There are no alternative facts when it
comes to American history.
-Joyce Vance
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