To President Trump, the veracity of statistics and scorekeepers can turn on a dime.
When data works in his favor, he praises, repeats and often exaggerates the figures. When the numbers on crime or the economy run counter to his narrative, they are frequently deemed “fake,” “phony” and a “fraud.”
In his second term, he has escalated attacks on independent data, including firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after an unfavorable jobs report, misrepresenting evidence on vaccines, and stopping data collection on climate change, bird flu and food insecurity. The moves threaten trust in sources that have informed policymakers for generations.
A White House spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the president was “committed to ensuring Americans have access to accurate and reliable public data,” and had called out shortcomings in government data that had undermined the public trust.
Here are three examples of Mr. Trump’s pressure tactics and selective approach to government data.
Jobs Data
For years, Mr. Trump has ping-ponged between boasting about favorable jobs data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and disparaging disappointing figures as fraudulent.
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, he repeatedly dismissed the bureau’s figures on job growth under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Sept. 8, 2023
Mr. Trump cast reports of unemployment below 4 percent as “phony” at a South Dakota rally.
Despite Mr. Trump’s claim of misleading metrics, the agency did not change its unemployment rubric. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases six measures of unemployment and has long designated one — the number of people who have been searching for a job for four weeks — as the official rate.
Mr. Trump later attacked the agency for an unusually large revision of jobs data. Without providing evidence, he accused it of hiding data and providing cover for Mr. Biden.
But once he returned to office, Mr. Trump began to celebrate the bureau’s reports.
April 29, 2025
At a rally in Michigan, he trumpeted job growth.
“In three months, we have created 350,000 jobs.”
Then, after an anemic report for July and downward revisions of growth in his second term, Mr. Trump immediately reverted to attacking the agency.
And, in a startling escalation, he fired its commissioner, Erika McEntarfer.
Aug. 1, 2025
Defending the move that same day, he again pointed to “phony” numbers.
(Some aides to Mr. Trump made a different argument: The jobs data revisions during Ms. McEntarfer’s tenure were unacceptably large.)
Economists and experts in government statistics say that for now, the jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics continues to be trustworthy, though its estimates are subject to revision. Experts said any interference with the process of compiling statistics would be very difficult and not go unnoticed.
Crime Data
In Mr. Trump’s telling, cities are plagued with record-shattering waves of crime, justifying deployments of troops and federal law enforcement. In reality, though crime remains a concern for many urban residents, violent crime in many U.S. cities is at a low over recent decades and has declined after a pandemic surge.
June 22, 2024
At a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Mr. Trump claimed that data showing a decline in crime was fraudulent.
Once elected to a second term, Mr. Trump instead lauded drops in crime.
“Crime is down in Washington, D.C., street crime, violent crime, by 25 percent. And people have seen — they’ve noticed a big difference.”
But in August, as he announced a federal takeover of Washington’s police force, Mr. Trump claimed, falsely, that the city was awash in historic levels of crime. When local officials retorted by citing the same decline in violent crime that he had noted months earlier, Mr. Trump claimed that the numbers were “phony.”
Aug. 26, 2025
Later that month, at a cabinet meeting, he suggested there was a conspiracy.
A White House official said the president was pointing out reports that data was “manipulated,” something he had not previously been aware of when citing Washington crime data.
Earlier, in July, local news reported that Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department had opened an internal police investigation into whether a commander had misclassified crimes by downplaying their severity; the commander has denied doing so. The commander was placed on leave, and the Justice Department opened an investigation into the matter.
Experts have said that while it is possible the city underreports some crime data on its public website, its official reports to the F.B.I. are still reliable and do show a decline in violent crime.
The Economy and Tariffs
Mr. Trump has also alternated between citing and attacking the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. He has cited analyses that paint the tariffs that are core to his economic agenda as a revenue generator but denounced the office when its reports undercut his legislative policies.
In his most recent presidential campaign, Mr. Trump cited the office’s projections for economic growth and the cost of legislation to assail Mr. Biden’s policies as ineffective and costly. In doing so, he suggested the agency was a neutral and believable arbiter.
January 2022
He cited the budget office’s economic analysis at a rally in Texas.
But soon after returning to office, as the budget office started to analyze his own economic policies, Mr. Trump began deriding its forecasts and the office itself with false and unsupported claims.
May 30, 2025
He accused the office of “purposefully” underestimating economic growth in a social media post.
“The Democrat inspired and ‘controlled’ Congressional Budget Office (CBO) purposefully gave us an EXTREMELY LOW level of Growth, 1.8% over 10 years. How ridiculous and unpatriotic is that!”
The budget office’s director is a Republican who worked for the George W. Bush administration. The Trump administration has provided no evidence that the office estimated lower economic growth purposefully to undermine Mr. Trump’s tax cut legislation. In fact, the agency estimated in 2024 and reiterated in January, shortly before Mr. Trump took office, that annual U.S. growth would average 1.8 percent over the next decade.
In August, the budget office updated an estimate on Mr. Trump’s tariffs, saying that if those rates remained in place, tariff revenue would decrease federal deficits by $4 trillion.
August 2025
At a cabinet meeting, Mr. Trump promoted that estimate with delight.
A few weeks later, the budget office revised down projections for economic growth, citing the tariffs as one factor. Mr. Trump left that report unmentioned.
