Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had a problem with the employment data released monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: how to square the low unemployment rate and solid monthly job numbers under President Obama with his message of an America reduced to an economic hellscape caused by eight years of failed socialism.

His solution was to continually dismiss the numbers as fraudulent, in Trumpian terms: "phony," "totally fiction," and "the biggest hoax in American politics."

But on Friday, when the first monthly jobs report of his presidency showed a gain of 235,000 jobs in February, he told his spokesman exactly how to describe the numbers. "I talked to the President prior to this and he said to quote him very clearly," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said.

The line from Trump, according to Spicer: "They may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now."



Both Spicer and the reporters in the room laughed after he delivered the line.