When it comes to President Donald Trump, the Associated Press can twist anything into a lose-lose situation.
In a September 5 piece, AP White House reporter (and longtime economics writer) Josh Boak performed said mental gymnastics to distort the news that the economy added 162,000 jobs in August and smashed expectations.
The headline was ludicrous: “Trump keeps heralding an economic boom, but even a solid jobs report is causing problems for him.”
Of course, his thesis was predicated upon Trump’s frustration with the stock market, which tumbled on jittery trader fears of a potential interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve, not inflation worries:
The August job numbers might have been a welcome break from after months of sluggish hiring and concerns about inflation that have been weighing on Trump and his party two months from Election Day. But speaking from the Oval Office, Trump instead launched into a grievance session about inflation and interest rates.
“Might have been a welcome break?” What kind of weaselly framing is that? The jobs numbers eclipsed consensus estimates (+53,000) by 306 percent.
The crazy part is that Boak even mentioned that “the financial markets, the Federal Reserve and U.S. trade partners” were all targets of Trump’s ire. The Federal Reserve’s abject hesitation to reduce interest rates substantially in the face of relatively tame inflation prior to the Iran War has typically drawn the president’s criticism.
But Boak spun it away anyway: “He objected to the commonly accepted notion in economics that the surprise gain of 162,000 jobs in August could contribute to inflationary pressures.”
Perhaps Trump is frustrated because the Fed’s behavior has consistently sent markets scrambling over potential rate hikes when the economy performs well, as former Fed chairman Jerome Powell has done in the past? When the September 2025 jobs report was released in November (after the BLS shutdown), showing the economy again smashed expectations by adding 119,000 jobs, Business Insider reported that “stocks sagged again as investors continued to mull weak rate-cut odds and as valuation concerns returned to the conversation.”
Here’s a crazy idea: The “jobs report” proper didn’t cause “problems” for Trump. He just chose to wield it to smack the Fed around. That’s typical Trumpian reactionary banter, not evidence that he’s sweating bullets now because the jobs market overperformed.
As Boak quoted from Trump himself, “‘Success does not cause inflation. Stupidity causes inflation,’ Trump vented in the Oval Office, as he declared it ‘crazy’ that the stock markets fell Friday on inflation concerns.” Boak just chose to butcher the framing because, well, it’s Trump after all.
But what else can anyone really expect from Boak? After all, he’s still the same guy who hypocritically called Trump the “face of economic discontent” in November 2025 after being on record actively simping for the inflationary disaster of Bidenomics. As Americans tackled the fallout from the 40-year high inflation crisis in December 2023, Boak tried to make it seem like Americans were too ignorant to see the brilliance of Bidenomics: “Biden goes into 2024 with the economy getting stronger, but voters feel horrible about it.”
Even taking the Iran War into account exposes Boak’s hypocrisy. MRC Business recently released a study with CNSNews using BLS data to calculate the five-month average annual consumer price inflation rate spanning the entirety of the Iran War to date (March-July 2026) and juxtaposed it to the same period during 2022 (March-July). This year, it's currently 3.6 percent. During the same period in 2022 under Joe Biden, with no war underway, the inflation rate averaged a whopping 8.6 percent.
When Boak was busily singing President Joe Biden’s economic praises in December 2023, consumer prices had already spiked 17.6 percent since his term began.
Take a seat, Josh.
