The Secretary of Commerce has determined that the purposes for which the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC) was established have been fulfilled, and the committee has been terminated effective February 28, 2025.1
The committee was formed in 1999 under the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972. It's charter, reauthorized every two years by Congress since 1999, was due to be renewed in June of 2025. Not only was it not renewed but some urgent reason required it to be terminated early — as soon as possible after the beginning of the second run of the Donald Trump Reality-President Show.
The excuse of cost savings not being available, as the twelve highly respected experts on the committee provided their services pro bono, and the meetings were held by video conference, the termination was for the reality-show reason that it's “purposes had been fulfilled”. None of the experts was appointed by Donald Trump. None was a Reality-President Show expert so they were written out of the show to avoid conflicts. They were simply unlikely to deliver the lines that were written for them, to obey non-disclosure agreements, etc.
Viewers of television shows phase out when presented with detail. It is a perfect excuse to do away with such detail. On the Donald Trump Show, reality is what the star says it is, or what his co-stars say until he should choose to refute them.
Unfortunately, the DOGE required BEA cost cuts, also, to fight “waste, fraud and abuse”. These cuts necessitated changes to the methodologies for developing labor, inflation, and U.S. Census statistics. Because of the termination of FESAC no advice or oversight was available regarding the changes from outside of the new Department of Commerce MAGA staff and a few leftovers from the previous administration.
Again, this simplified the task of the Donald Trump Reality-President Show writers. Or so they thought until an actual Jobs Report was somehow released on August 1. Not only was the number of new jobs way below expectations (73,000), and way below those of the Biden Administration, but the June numbers were revised down from the 147,000 previously reported to 14,000 and the May numbers from 144,000 to 19,000.
The star had gloated during those months about how little his tariffs were effecting employment. See!!! The doomsayers were wrong and he was right, he repeatedly crowed. The told-you-so calls were echoed by the Reality-President Show experts... endlessly. Now all of that proved to be untrue and he looked imperfect — he whose first rule was that he was never wrong. If he seemed wrong or incompetent or manipulative, etc., it was the result of a deep and insidious conspiracy of the powers of evil.
But a fall-guy
culprit was soon enough found. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
Commissioner Erika McEntarfer was a Biden Administration appointee.
The star accused and found her guilty of releasing actual
rigged job numbers “to make Republicans and [him] look bad”.
The Commerce Department BEA statistics, he informed his fans, were grossly rigged, prior to the 2024 election — in spite of the fact that FESAC was intact and reviewed them — in order to make Biden look good. Corrected for Biden's rigged jobs numbers, Trump averred, his were even higher than the figures given in the grossly inflated original May-June (and unvetted July) reports. Much higher. Then the Biden Administration destroyed the evidence so everything looks legitimate. “Everybody knows” it.
On Friday, August 2, the day after the Jobs Report was released, the star himself wrote a memorable scene for this episode, featuring a MAGA Reality President-Show expert, Stephen Moore, to read lines revealing new secret data.
“We have access to the... uh... some data that no one else does.... based on unpublished Census Bureau data that will be released in the next six months...” The numbers were unbelievably good in line with the writers' characterization of the “Greatest President in the History of All Time” star. Census Bureau data is not designed to serve as economic data nor is it tracked monthly. But it creates reality-show reality and that's the point.
Nor were these numbers “job numbers”. The audience would have been unable to suspend disbelief sufficiently to accept “new,” highly positive employment statistics. The markets would have been forced to accept that the United States economic numbers are fiction written by the Donald Trump Reality President-Show writers who simply present what they are told the star requires.
Instead, they were purported personal income numbers. Not only that but numbers presented on the level of a Dick-and-Jane primer for an audience having no ability to understand such matters and a presenter needing to preempt all fact-checking by those who do.
Such numbers vary widely depending upon method of calculation. No methodology or context at all was provided. They are not verifiable and wont be publicly released, the viewer is conveniently informed, until some six months will pass, when the viewers will not remember the presentation for anything more than its emotional impact if at all. Of course, they have not and will not be reviewed and signed off by FESAC who the Trump Administration no longer needs in order to guarantee its methods and its numbers. As we have observed is always the case on the Donald Trump Reality President-Show, they are “real” because — and solely because — the star says they are.
It seems highly unlikely that we will ever see numbers so infuriating to the “Greatest President in the History of All Time” star of the Reality-President Show again. Safeguards have surely been put in place, the responsible people defamed and written out of the script.
Also from the Virtual Vanaprastha:
- Donald Trump and the Donald Trump Show starring Donald Trump. July 6, 2025. "Fate gave him a large inheritance, mediocre business prowess and the wiles to realize that his genius lay in opportunism, self-promotion and the ability to manipulate others."
- Harvard and Columbia: What Stephen Miller, Russ Vought and the Heritage Foundation Know. June 2, 2025. "beginning with the stock market crash of 1929, they discovered that not all of the Progressive activists that had supposedly been swept away had actually disappeared."
- Shelving the books in a dying democracy. March 24, 2025. "I only now begin to shelve books, in fits and starts, with the scenes I am seeing replaying over and over as I do."
- Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. February 17, 2025. "It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation..."
- Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.