White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Friday was asked whether Trump thought the positive jobs report, released earlier that day, was an “accurate and a fair way to measure the economy,” given the president’s baseless assertions during the campaign that Obama-era jobs reports were fake.
There’s no good way for Spicer to answer this question. An honest response would be to acknowledge the absurdity of Trump’s blanket dismissals of government data, but he would be fired on the spot for such an offense. Instead, Spicer offered a cheeky grin, and told the press he’d spoken with the president on this very subject earlier in the day. “He said to quote him very clearly,” Spicer said. “‘They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.’”
President Trump on the job report, per Sean Spicer: “They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.” https://t.co/8HYuY2A7tJ
— CNN (@CNN) March 10, 2017
While the Washington press corps can laugh along, this isn’t funny. We now have a president who will delegitimize even the basic contours of reality if they don’t suit his agenda, and re-legitimize them when they do. He is playing the same game with the impending CBO score of his replacement for Obamacare. And he’s betting that you are too stupid or too cynical to care.