Ladies and gentlemen, gather 'round. I want to tell you a story—no, not a fairy tale, though there are dragons and magical charts. No, not a thriller, though someone did get fired with the enthusiasm of a reality show firing. This, my friends, is the story of Donald J. Trump and the Magical Mystery Charts, a dazzling Oval Office performance where data meets denial, and Stephen Moore plays the lute.
It’s August 7, 2025. Global markets? Meh. They’ve shrugged off Trump’s latest tariff fan fiction like a kid ignoring a bedtime story. But domestically? Oof. The U.S. economy is sending up more red flags than a Soviet parade. Hiring? Sluggish. Inflation? Warming up like a microwave burrito. Housing prices? Sinking faster than Trump’s approval rating at a climate science convention.
So what does our 45th and now 47th president do? Hold a press conference? Bring in policy experts? Nah. He summons—yes, summons, like a wizard conjuring ghosts—reporters to the Oval Office for a visual aid extravaganza. Picture it: Trump holding up big colorful charts like a proud 3rd grader at a science fair, except the volcano isn’t erupting—it’s just the economy.
And flanking him, like a true sidekick in this PowerPoint pageant, is none other than Stephen Moore, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of Trumponomics, which is kind of like writing a cookbook after burning down your last kitchen. Moore, bless his heart, flips through easel-mounted graphs with the solemn intensity of a man about to reveal the secrets of the universe. Or at least the secret to deflecting blame.
Now let’s be clear: this was not a briefing. This was an intervention. Except Trump wasn’t the one being helped—he was the one hijacking the whole session like, “Hi, my name is Donald, and I’m addicted to alternative facts.”
“The economy is solid,” Trump proclaims, gesturing at a chart that may or may not have been printed at a Kinko’s an hour earlier.
Of course, this pep rally came hot on the heels of a jobs report that basically whispered, “Psst... something’s wrong.” July added a measly 73,000 jobs, and May and June got revised downward by 258,000—which is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ way of going, “Oops, we overestimated by a small Midwestern town.”
But instead of grappling with reality like a leader, Trump did what Trump does best: fire someone. RIP Erika McEntarfer, head of the BLS, who made the mistake of letting data speak louder than devotion.
According to Trump and Moore, the job numbers were wrong because—brace yourself—they overcounted 1.5 million jobs during Biden’s term. Were there methodological flaws? Maybe. But Trump’s take?
“I think they did it purposely,” he said, without a shred of statistical evidence, a PowerPoint bullet point, or even a napkin sketch.
Because when the facts don’t fit the narrative, just accuse the data of treason.
And Moore? Oh, he came prepared—with charts, unpublished Census data, and the energy of a man trying to impress his econ professor and a skeptical nation at the same time. He even dropped this gem:
“Median household income is already up $1,174 under Trump,” Moore beamed, citing data that, conveniently, no one can verify. It’s like saying your cousin met Bigfoot—just trust me, bro.
Trump, glowing like a kid discovering cookies for the first time, chimed in:
“That’s an incredible number. If I would have said this, nobody would have believed it.”
Sir. That’s the first accurate thing you’ve said all day.
Let’s not gloss over the context here. Tariffs—those taxes on imports Trump treats like Pokémon cards—are back with a vengeance. Steel? Taxed. French wine? Toasted. That pair of cheap sneakers your kid wanted? Sorry, it’s now a luxury item.
And while the stock market has held up like a stubborn ex who won’t leave, real people—you know, voters—are feeling the squeeze. Inflation has ticked back up, and Goldman Sachs, the ever-so-lovable vampire squid of finance, expects the next CPI report to hit 3%, up from 2.3% in April. Translation? Your grocery bill has joined a gym and is now lifting weights.
But Trump, ever the showman, knows charts have the magical power to make bad news look like good vibes. Forget the fact that 2024 had 2 million new jobs under Biden. Never mind that 2023 clocked in at 2.6 million. And pay no attention to the statistical wizard behind the curtain.
What matters now is Trump’s feels-like economy. You know, that gut-level sense that everything is great, so long as you don’t look too closely. If consumer sentiment is a vibe, then Trump’s economy is basically a motivational poster stuck to a crumbling wall.
Let’s talk optics. The Oval Office has seen a lot over the years—FDR’s fireside chats, JFK’s Cuban Missile Crisis calls, Obama’s decision room photos. But now it’s home to Trump’s graph-flipping variety hour.
And can we talk about the charts themselves? These weren’t your standard line graphs or elegant bar charts. No, these were comic sans economic propaganda, lovingly hand-picked to do one thing: make Trump look like the second coming of Adam Smith (if Adam Smith had gold elevators and called economists “nerds”).
When Trump holds up a chart, he doesn’t want you to analyze it. He wants you to absorb it. Preferably while nodding and muttering, “Wow, tremendous.” He’s not pitching policy—he’s doing infomercials.
“This bar is yuge! This one? Sad! But look at this trend line—beautiful, just beautiful, the best line, believe me.”
And if you don’t believe him, he’ll fire someone, accuse the data of being woke, and remind you that Stephen Moore totally agrees.
Speaking of which, Moore—God bless his Econ 101 heart—keeps showing up like that one guy in group projects who insists on doing the PowerPoint even though he can’t use spellcheck. He once got nominated for the Fed, then un-nominated himself after Senate pushback reminded everyone he once argued that women shouldn’t be paid as much. And this is the man now whispering sweet fiscal nothings into the president’s ear.
At this point, you have to wonder: is the economy really the issue here? Or is it just the latest scapegoat in Trump’s never-ending game of blame, distract, and deflect?
Look, no one denies that inflation hurt Biden. In 2022, prices soared like Elon Musk’s ego. Gas was painful, eggs were priceless, and used cars were basically NFTs with wheels. But since then, the economy has been trying to stabilize, like a toddler on a balance beam.
Trump promised a boom. What we got is more of a meh.
The problem isn’t just the job numbers. It’s that Trump doesn’t trust the same data everyone else does. Wall Street trusts it. Economists trust it. The Fed trusts it. But Trump? Nah. He’s like that guy who insists the thermostat is wrong and demands everyone wear sweaters anyway.
So now, we’re back in familiar territory: a president who distrusts experts, fires people who don’t flatter him, and brings his own chalkboard to the debate.
The takeaway? If the charts say he’s right, he’ll shout it from the rooftops. If the charts say he’s wrong, he’ll make new ones and fire the old ones for insubordination.
And the American people? Well, we’re stuck trying to decode which numbers are real, which are imaginary, and which were drawn by a guy who once used Sharpie on a hurricane map.
In conclusion, this Oval Office chart-o-rama wasn’t about fixing the economy. It was about fixing the narrative. Trump doesn’t need economic growth—he needs economic applause. He doesn’t want jobs to improve—he wants credit regardless. And if that means holding up some unverified numbers while grinning next to Stephen Moore like they just won a raffle, then so be it.
Charts, schmarts. The real takeaway is this:
When the data disagrees with Trump, the data gets deported.
Roll credits.