The Dictatorship
Americans can no longer trust federal statistics
In Donald Trump’s first term, he infamously used a black Sharpie to alter a hurricane forecast to support his claim that Alabama would be affected by the storm. It was not.
In his second term, he’s taking a black Sharpie to reality itself.
No longer held back by responsible advisers or members of Congress with any backbone, Trump has begun a war on any facts or data that don’t serve him, from economic statistics that make him look bad to crime data that doesn’t support his demand for power.
Once the gold standard of data, the U.S. government risks becoming as believable as Trump’s press secretary breathlessly praising his greatness.
This will hurt all of us, from doctors trying to keep people healthy to police seeking to keep them safe to business leaders looking to make tough decisions.
Trump’s impulse to bend reality is born out of his sense of having to be right all the time.
Trump’s impulse to bend reality is often surreal and born out of his sense of having to be right all the time.
Statistics are supposed to be neutral. A weather forecast does not care about politics. Neither does unemployment data, inflation or public health statistics. But Trump’s Sharpie was a preview of something more dangerous: the impulse to bend not just the story of events, but the very measurements by which we understand them.
We are now heading into the fall of 2025 with a strange sensation: The numbers we once relied on no longer hold.
When D.C.’s crime numbers don’t justify a federal takeover? Ignore them.
When a weak jobs report spoils the narrative? Fire the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.
When the census counts undocumented immigrants? Exclude them.
Trump has discovered a simple trick: If he doesn’t like the number, he changes it. He wants to “Sharpie” not just storms, but data about jobs, the economy and health. If he wants favorable ratings, he’ll choose pollsters who will deliver the answer he’s looking for. The number may look correct, but the methodology behind it is rigged.
Of course, that’s not how it works. Reality doesn’t bend to satisfy a wannabe tyrant’s ego. A poll stacked with supporters doesn’t reflect real public opinion, and unemployed workers don’t just disappear because you fudged the data.
Data is the lifeblood of the federal government.
For generations, federal statistics have been the compass by which Americans navigated storms, both literal and political. Data is the lifeblood of the federal government. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us whether the economy is growing or shrinking. The Census Bureau counts the population that determines political power and federal funding. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks outbreaks and mortality rates, while the Environmental Protection Agency measures the pollutants in the air we breathe and the water we drink.
If we cannot trust Washington’s numbers, someone else will have to step up.
States are well positioned to know how many jobs were created within their borders, how many hospital beds are filled, where disease is spreading, whether classrooms are shrinking or swelling. Industries, too, have their own ways of measuring economic health. Taken together, these decentralized snapshots can give us a more accurate picture than doctored federal releases.
The private sector can play a role, too. Major technology firms already track mobility, consumption and health trends at a level of detail governments rarely match. Hospitals, insurers and research institutions keep vast data troves on public health. Banks and businesses can track employment and economic activity in real time. If Washington insists on erasing the record, it may fall to these actors to provide the country with a clearer picture of itself.
It may fall to governors, universities, nonprofits and private firms to provide the public square with reliable information until the federal government can once again be trusted.
Nonprofits and media organizations can assemble and share this information in ways the public can trust. A distributed model of truth is not ideal, but in moments of crisis it can be the only safeguard against federal manipulation.
It won’t be perfect. Federal agencies exist to give us a national perspective — to add up the parts and show us the whole. A jobs report does not tell us whether California or Ohio is thriving, but whether America is growing. A census does not describe one community, but the composition of the country itself. If America cannot agree on the numbers, we cannot agree on the problems, let alone the solutions.
The larger question is whether Americans are willing to demand this vigilance. Data is not glamorous, but it is an important foundation of democracy. If the public shrugs at manipulated numbers, then the lies calcify into the official record. If we push back, then Trump’s Sharpie loses its power.
The storm ahead will not just be political. It will be about who we trust to count, to measure, to tally our collective life. If the federal government abdicates that role, others must step in until it can be restored.
Because without reliable numbers, we cannot even begin the work of understanding our problems, let alone solving them.
For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders-Townsend, watch “The Weeknight” every Monday-Friday at 7 p.m. ET on BLN.
Michael Steele is a co-host of “The Weeknight,” which airs Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. ET on BLN. He is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
The Dictatorship
Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.
Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.
* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.
* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.
* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.
* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.
* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.
* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”
Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.
The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.
“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.
Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.
Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.
In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.
But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.
An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.
The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.
“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.
“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.
Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.
“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.
“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.
In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”
In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”
After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.
“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”
Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”
“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.
On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.
But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”
In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:
In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.
As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”
He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.
“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”
Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.
In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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