We may assume President Trump is quite pleased with the strong jobs report from his first full month in office: He retweeted the Drudge Report's triumphant “GREAT AGAIN” framing of the numbers Friday morning, after touting employment figures released by payroll firm ADP earlier in the week.
If there was any argument over whether Trump was flip-flopping on the jobs report at the precise moment it reflected positively on him, White House press secretary Sean Spicer laid it to rest Friday afternoon, telling reporters: “I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly: 'They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.' ”
Let's take a walk down memory lane and remember a few times Trump trashed the jobs numbers as “fake,” incomplete or something other than the right way to determine whether America had been made “great again.”
“Unemployment rate only dropped because more people are out of labor force & have stopped looking for work. Not a real recovery, phony numbers”
Oct. 19, 2012
"7.8% unemployment number is a complete fraud as evidenced by the jobless claims number released yesterday. Real unemployment is at least 15%”
Aug. 11, 2013
“We can rev up this economy like it should be, not with false numbers like 7.4 percent unemployment. But with real numbers.”
May 31, 2014
“Unemployment is a totally phony number.”
June 16, 2015
“Our real unemployment is anywhere from 18 to 20 percent. Don't believe the 5.6. Don't believe it.”
Aug. 11, 2015
“Then you hear there's a 5.4 percent unemployment. It's really — if you add it up, it's probably 40 percent if you think about it.”
Aug. 30, 2015
“They show those phony statistics where we are 5.4 percent unemployment. The real number, I saw a number that could be 42 percent, believe it or not.”
Sept. 28, 2015
“I hear 5.3 percent unemployment, that is the biggest joke there is in this country. That number is so false.”
Sept. 29, 2015
“The number is not reflective. I have seen numbers of 24 percent. I saw a number of 42 percent unemployment. … That number is so false.”
Oct. 9, 2015
“They say 5.3 percent employment. The number is probably 32 percent.”
Oct. 11, 2015
“Nobody has jobs. … It is not a real economy. It is a phony set of numbers. They cooked the books.”
Jan. 17, 2016
“Look again, you hear these phony jobs numbers? People that gave up looking for jobs? They are considered employed.”
Feb. 9, 2016
“Don't believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment. As high as 35 — as in fact, I heard recently, 42 percent.”
March 12, 2016
“The numbers are phony. These are all phony numbers. Numbers given to politicians to look good. These are phony numbers.”
May 24, 2016
“You hear a 5 percent unemployment rate. It's such a phony number. That number was put in for presidents and for politicians so that they look good to the people.”
July 7, 2016
“The phony 5 percent numbers that we hear about with the unemployment.”
Aug. 8, 2016
“The 5 percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.”
Nov. 4, 2016
“The terrible jobs report that just came out … you can see phony numbers, 5 percent.”
Dec. 8, 2016
“The unemployment number, as you know, is totally fiction.”
Given Trump's interest in the subject, it's highly likely that this list is incomplete.