Trump's answer to numbers he doesn't like: Change them or throw them away

[Celerity]

From D.C. crime rates to census collection to labor statistics, the administration has suppressed inconvenient data and conjured inaccurate statistics to bolster policy objectives.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/08/14/trump-data-misinformation/

https://archive.ph/oH2Kg



President Donald Trump presented inaccurate crime statistics to justify a federal takeover of D.C. police. He announced plans for the census to stop counting undocumented immigrants. And he ordered the firing of the official in charge of compiling basic statistics about the U.S. economy after a weak jobs report.

This month marked an escalation in Trump’s war on data, as he repeatedly tries to undermine statistics that threaten his agenda and distorts figures to bolster his policies. The latest instances come on top of actions the administration has taken across federal health, climate and education agencies to erase or overhaul data collection to align with the administration’s agenda and worldview.

The president’s manipulation of government data threatens to erode public trust in facts that leaders of both parties have long relied on to guide policy decisions. A breakdown in official government statistics could also create economic instability, restrain lifesaving health care and limit forecasts of natural disasters. Trump has routinely spread misinformation since the start of his political career, but his efforts in his second term to bend data to support his agenda have invited comparisons to information control in autocratic countries.



“What he’s trying to do is to present the best possible picture of what he’s doing, even if that means he has to cook the numbers, even if that means he has to distort the data,” said Robert Cropf, a political science professor at St. Louis University. “It’s basically a page from the authoritarian playbook.”

snip

[tanyev]

1. Or flush them down the toilet, or edit them with a Sharpie....

[SheltieLover]

2. Repukes seem to have an aversion to facts

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

3. K&R

[dalton99a]

4. .

[Morbius]

5. It's easy to be offended by this.

The important thing to remember is that it works.

Control information and you can control a nation. Not a new thing. George Orwell pointed this out in 1948.