Trump Fires Statistician, Podcaster Cancels Vet, Dems Call Own Party Weak

Trump fires the top labor statistician in Washington, D.C. time out. A moment, a quick note. When I started this podcast, it was not with the idea of being yet another partisan political commentator where one guy or one other woman just says, the party in power that I don't like is bad every day. That was not the intention. It was about analyzing the top business news, technology news, and cultural news of the day through the lens of communication skills. That is the point of this show, unfortunately. We now live in extraordinarily extremist times where the most powerful country in the world is headed up by a leader who's trying to impose 1930s style authoritarianism on not only the country, but the world. And it affects every single institution. So nothing really I can do about that other than give you my best honest assessment of how top stories of the day can be understood through a communication lens to help you get better. So that's what we're all about. So I got to dive into this story. You deal with the news you get, not with what you actually want. So I'm trying to deal with reality. So speaking of Trump, now a lot of top Republicans are telling him to grow up. That's right. Harsh rhetoric. A far right podcaster outs a decorated veteran from West Point with a single tweet. New polling shows that the Associated from the Associated Press shows that Democrats are losing faith in their own party. They're calling it weak, disorganized, and ineffective. And finally, we look at a story, thankfully, that is somewhat apolitical. It is about the classic dilemma. Is it better to rent a home or to buy a home? New analysis from the New York Times on that front. So all that and more today on this show, which still says community, but we're in the process of changing the name of the show to Filtered with TJ Walker, where every day we look at the top stories in business, technology, and culture filtered through the lens of communication skills. So that is what we're all about here. Hi and welcome. Let's dive into the first story, no matter how distasteful it is to me and to a lot of you. So Trump fires the facts. The authoritarian playbook gets louder. There's a rule in democracy, or at least there used to be one. You're allowed to have your own opinions, but not your own facts. But Donald Trump has spent his entire career bulldozing that boundary. And on Friday, he took it to a whole new level when he fired Erica McIntar, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, all because she released a jobs report that didn't flatter him. The numbers weren't even catastrophic, just underwhelming. But rather than accept the reality, Trump declared the report phony, claimed it was rigged, and insisted the numbers were manipulated to make him look bad. When asked for evidence, his response was literally, it's my opinion. Let that sink in. A sitting president just dismissed a career statistician because her facts didn't match his feelings, and it wasn't true. He even spun a story claiming that this statistician had helped Kamala Harris during the last election by delaying bad economic numbers until after votes were cast. But in reality, her office revised the numbers down and before the election, not after the election. And the final report before Election Day showed a job growth had actually stalled. It's not just spin anymore, it's fiction. This is part of a larger pattern. Just in the last few months, Trump has ordered museums and park services to scrub references to slavery, Native Americans, climate change, and even his own impeachment. He's pressured intelligence officials to rewrite national security assessments. He's attacked the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for projecting that his tax plans would balloon the deficit. And he's replaced our sideline public servants who won't echo his version of reality. The Smithsonian even erased Trump from its impeachment exhibit, despite the fact that he's the only president impeached twice. The and was only reversed after public outcry. And it's not actually up yet. The reversal. The Union of Concerned Scientists says they've already tracked more than 400 attacks on federal science and data agencies in just the last six months of this term, nearly double the total entiring Trump's first term. And philosopher Michael Patrick lynch put it plainly, quote, democracy can't survive without a reliable infrastructure for facts, and authoritarian leaders know that. That's why they go after the truth first. This isn't about jobs data. It's about power and obedience. Trump doesn't want better information. He wants information that obeys. Let's not forget this is the guy who, going all the way back to the 1980s, claimed that Trump Tower had 10 more stories than it actually had. This is a guy where lying is built into the whole ecosystem of his brain and his mouth. What's the bottom line here? Democracy, and therefore worldwide capitalism, is under attack. If you're a capitalist, as I am, if you believe in free trade, as I do, if you believe in prosperity and abundance and more for the world and freedom for the world, you cannot have that. If the most powerful person in the world like it or not, the President of the United States says facts don't matter. It's whatever I say. Folks, we're not that far away from Trump simply stating that the 2028 election already happened and he was reelected and no need to count any votes or actually hold elections. We're not that far away. Okay, that was the bottom line here. Where do we really go from here? Because every single day, a new line is crossed by this administration in Washington. As I mentioned to you, I didn't really start this podcast with the goal of being a pure political commentator. My interest is in business news, culture, news, sports, economics, and maybe a little bit of politics, because that affects culture. But we live in this extremist, extremist time when one person has decided he's going to throw out the window every single norm of democracy that's been subscribed to by the Democrats and Republicans and the Whigs and every other party in America. So it is true, it's not blatantly unconstitutional to fire the head of statistics at the Bureau of Labor. It's true it's not unconstitutional. But every single president, regardless of party, has always respected the fact that this was a nonpartisan office. This was a non political office. If you want democracy to flourish, if you want the rest of the world to continue to place faith in American companies, American stocks, the American banking system, the American return on investment, you have to give them facts. You have to give them numbers based in reality. You cannot simply make up stuff the way they do under a dictatorship in Turkey. You cannot simply make up stuff the way a dictatorship in Venezuela did not that long ago. When you do that, you destroy credibility and investors flee. It's a big world. It is true. The United States is a big economy. And at the moment, the best, most productive, most successful corporations in the world are based here. It is true that at the moment, the top technology companies that have generated so much outsized growth for every stock index they're a part of are based here. But it doesn't have to be. It certainly doesn't have to continue that way. Especially when you combine this attack on facts, on logic, on reason itself, with the idea that this administration doesn't want the top scientists from China and Germany and Guatemala and anyplace else in the world moving to the United States to study here, learn here, apprentice at major corporations and start their own high tech companies. This administration is sending a very clear signal. We don't really want that anymore. We want to be insular. You know what else is insular? North Korea. Is the United States in danger of turning into North Korea overnight? No. But is it a path we're more likely headed towards than the path of the United States dominance that we've had the last 30, 40, 50 years? Yeah, that's their trajectory. Can Trump destroy us or bring us down that far, that quickly before he. I won't say before his term ends because when I look at his current actions, I don't think he believes his term will ever end again. A term, a four year term limit is just a fact. And the one thing we've seen Trump do again and again and again in his first six months is say if there's a fact out there that he doesn't agree with, he will simply lie, require everyone else to lie. Anyone who doesn't lie is fired or somehow destroyed or run out of public life. So at some point people are going to point out, okay, 2028, it's election time. Even Republicans will point that out. And I don't think we're that far off from the day where he simply says, nope. Nothing in the laws or the Constitution says there's going to be an election in 2028. Nope. You're misreading it. Fake news, no election, nothing to look at here. I'm going to stay in office till I say it's time for me to leave office. And that day, my friends, will never come. There's a lot of punditry out there on the Internet, but I'll, I'll tell you, I'm not hearing many people state what I think is the obvious. Connect the dots, folks. He's not leaving office. He's not. He's just not. And losing votes, well, that's a. Or having fewer votes than your opponent. That's just a fact in effect based world. We've transcended living in a fact based world. Having an election on an election day, having a swearing in on January 20th. These are all facts in a fact based world that are no longer relevant. So, yeah, it is time to get scared. It is time to speak out. I'm trying to speak out here. I hope you will as well. Hi, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me on this Sunday. I'm still in sort of a makeshift. I got my Internet back. If you've been watching this last few weeks, I just moved. This is my new home office. I still don't have blackout screens, so that's why you're seeing the excessive light in this corner. I'm not using my standard high quality cameras. This is A little webcam. Not using my high quality mic, but I wanted to just get up and going. And I just got the Internet back about a half an hour ago. So we're in sort of a test mode and trying to recalibrate things, and I hope to be back at full power come this time tomorrow. So I do want to thank you very much for joining me. Issue 2 GOP to Trump grow up after firing data sheaf. Yes, this is related to story one, but it's more of a nonpartisan perspective because what we're finding is even Republicans are saying Trump is going too far. What's striking about this firing is not just what Trump did, but who's now criticizing him. In a rare rebuke, several Republicans, including Senators Thom Tillis, Randol and Cynthia Loomis, called out the move as impetuous, damaging, and immature. Tillis says flat out, they ought to grow up talking about Trump and his team. Easterly, the fired statistician, wasn't a partisan hack. She was confirmed by a bipartisan Senate vote. And let me check that, because there's, there's a bunch of different people involved with the stats. But I do want to clarify that what Trump has done is so, is so incredibly odd, weird and unprecedented that Republicans are attacking him. And it's one thing when Rand Paul attacks you, he's been someone a little more courageous among Republicans. But it's more than one now doing it. And that's why I think this is hugely significant. So what's the bottom line? Even Republicans are attacking Trump for this firing of a nonpartisan statistician. It's unprecedented. It is destabilizing to the entire worldwide economy. You think it's insignificant. You think it's insider baseball. You are wrong. Everything about our modern world is based on the premise of a free flow of honest information. Yes, there's always marketing hype and spin, but when you dig deep enough, real businesses and real investors have data they need to make decisions. That is over as of right now. And thankfully, at least a handful of Republicans are, are standing up and calling it like it is to Trump. That's the bottom line. So where to really, really go from this? I will make the prediction that these senators, these Republican senators, stop mouthing out. That's essentially what Trump thinks of. Oh, you're just mouthing off to me. Shut up or I'll primary you. Shut up or I will do a couple of angry tweets at 3am and the next thing you know, your, your spouse, your children are going to be attacked or they're going to be hounded when they go to the grocery store, they go to their schools, and I'm going to make your life an absolute living hell. That is essentially the power technique of Trump. And so I, I am predicting that these Rep. Republicans are just going to roll over. They're not going to fight it, they're not going to keep up the attack, in part because of Trump's brilliant strategy. It's an evil strategy, but it's a brilliant strategy. He's going to commit suicide.