Trump’s jobs tweet might have broken federal rules
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Trump’s jobs tweet might have broken federal rules
President Trump has been tweeting about the economy a lot lately, and this morning was no different. But one of his tweets caught our eye.
Excellent Jobs Numbers just released – and I have only just begun. Many job stifling regulations continue to fall. Movement back to USA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2017
Notice he said the jobs numbers had just been released. That’s true; the Bureau of Labor Statistics had published them just 15 minutes earlier. That puts Trump’s tweet in violation of a federal rule (page three). It says, in part, when federal data is released, “employees of the Executive Branch shall not comment publicly on the data until at least one hour after the official release time.”
The White House apologized in March when former spokesman Sean Spicer and former Chief of Staff Reince Preibus tweeted prematurely about jobs numbers and the president retweeted a Drudge Report post, CNN notes.
The delay is meant to ensure that the markets have time to digest the data before government officials start talking about it. Earlier this year, many observers, including us, noted that the president’s itchy Twitter finger could roil markets.
We reached out to the BLS for comment, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.
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