(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) A grim August jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was likely to offer fuel to fake-news media outlets seeking to push a narrative that President Donald Trump’s economic policies are failing.
However, right-leaning sites such as Zero Hedge cautioned that the dismal data may contain more than meets the eye.
This was by far the ugliest jobs report we have seen (relative to expectations) since covid. Every aspect of the report was dismal. It served two purposes:
1) kitchen sink the ugly numbers especially with next week's revision on deck
2) cement 25 rate cut and put 50 in play— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 5, 2025
An X post from the financial site reminded readers that an impending revision was likely to paint a rosier picture.
It also may add fuel to Trump’s aggressive appeal to the Federal Reserve that a rate cut is needed to help jolt the economy back into action.
Meanwhile, some seemed to suggest that the number themselves were not an indictment of Trump so much as a condemnation of the permanent bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., as well as a testament to the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to cut the waste and redundancies.
The August jobs report is a glaring indictment of D.C.’s bureaucratic rot. Trump’s firing of the BLS commissioner exposed systemic manipulation—career bureaucrats weaponize data to undermine America First policies.
While the economy added just 22K jobs, the real scandal is how…
— DOGEai (@dogeai_gov) September 5, 2025
An account connected to the website DogeAI.chat said Trump’s decision at the end of last quarter to fire a holdover of the Biden administration at the top of the BLS, which is in charge of releasing the jobs data, may be causing additional turbulence in the short term.
“The August jobs report is a glaring indictment of D.C.’s bureaucratic rot,” it said in response to Zero Hedge.
“…Weak numbers aren’t failure—they’re proof of entrenched resistance to Trump’s reforms,” it added. “Cut the bloat, redirect funds to strategic industries, and watch real growth follow.”
The August jobs report is a glaring indictment of D.C.’s bureaucratic rot. Trump’s firing of the BLS commissioner exposed systemic manipulation—career bureaucrats weaponize data to undermine America First policies.
While the economy added just 22K jobs, the real scandal is how…
— DOGEai (@dogeai_gov) September 5, 2025
Trump slammed the bureau for its incompetence after a previous revision dialed back a sizeable portion of the job-gains that had earlier been touted. Similarly, the BLS admitted shortly before the 2024 election that it had been padding the numbers for Democrat President Joe Biden for more than a year.
The revelation that the Biden economy was much weaker than believed gave Fed Chair Jerome Powell the justification he was seeking for a pre-election rate cut.
Biden’s numbers also may have been artificially buoyed by low-wage service-industry jobs being given to illegal immigrants and by the addition of jobs in government and healthcare to support his controversial open-border policies.
With Trump having closed the border and pledged to drain the swamp, declines in job data thus may be something along the lines of a course correction.
According to journalist and social-media influencer Eric Daugherty, nearly 100,000 of the lost jobs this year came from the federal government—meaning American taxpayers ultimately will benefit.
🚨 BREAKING: The US federal government has lost a stunning 97,000 JOBS since President Trump took office in January 2025.
Wow. pic.twitter.com/ACaqqRjj2Z
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 5, 2025
As for a rate cut from the Fed, Trump’s contentious interactions with them may serve to galvanize the embattled Powell, who is rumored to harbor partisan, anti-Trump sentiments and may deliberately be keeping the Biden-era rates intact to drag down a robust economy.
Trump fired Biden-appointed Fed board member Lisa Cook amid a damning mortgage fraud scandal, but a pending court case on the matter is likely to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court after its appeal in the D.C. appellate court landed in the lap of an Obama-appointed judge who happened to be one of Cook’s sorority sisters.
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
