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FEATURING KOBIE CHRISTIAN - President Donald Trump has fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for using data-driven analysis to point out a weak jobs market. The commissioner announced fewer than expected jobs for the month of July and revised down numbers from the previous two months - such revision is standard when more data becomes available.

Still, Trump, furious that reality contradicted his claims of great economic growth, decided to fire the person who was appointed by a bipartisan consensus.

In addition to the job market weakening, inflation continues to increase, reflected particularly in the rising cost of groceries, which Trump promised to bring down. Now, there’s an easy-to-use online tool called Don't Inflate Our Plates allowing people to calculate inflation in their own state.

Kobie Christian, a spokesperson for Unrig Our Economy, a campaign to fix the rules of the US economy in favor of working people, explains what the online tool is and how it works.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program, Kobie.

Kobie Christian: Hi. Thank you for having me, Sonali.

Kolhatkar: Let's first talk, before we discuss the tool itself, about what the firing of Erika McEntarfer means. This is a person whose job it is to simply have reliable statistics. It's not a political position. And just for merely reporting the truth, she got fired. What is that symbolic of indicative of when we think about Trump and his promises about the economy?

Christian: Yeah, as you mentioned last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a meager 73,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.2%. It's also worth noting again, as you said, that there were 258,000 fewer jobs in the months of June and May than were initially reported.

I can't say much about what this means for future reports, but I think we see the effects of what the report indicates, already.

Republicans and in Congress are already admitting that their constituents are living in what they call “recession economies.” And all of this comes after those same Republicans in Congress voted to rubberstamp President Trump's tariffs, which are nothing more than tax on working people and small businesses in America in order to pay for more tax breaks for billionaires.

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