What is the baseline for success if the president disputes the basic facts used to judge the results?

When it came to the economy, Trump's views on the unemployment rate seemed to shift at random. In his speech announcing his presidential run, he claimed that "real unemployment" was as high as 20 percent and not the 5.5 percent rate at the time. Later that year, he claimed the unemployment rate could be as high as 42 percent. At his first press conference since the election, he said 96 million people were looking for work; the most charitable interpretation indicates he was off by 82 million.

While economists often use other measures of unemployment than the one most commonly cited, which only includes people out of work who are actively looking for a job, Trump's numbers departed from those broader methods to the point of absurdity. His "96 million" claim, to name one example, appeared to include everyone from high school students to nursing home residents as frustrated job seekers. This all-over-the-map approach creates an obvious problem — how do we judge Trump's success or failures on the economy? Will he still be claiming 42 percent of people are out of work when he's running for re-election? Or will he go back to the traditional number — currently 4.7 percent — to gauge how things are going? One reporter put this to Spicer at Monday's news conference, asking: What is the national unemployment rate?" Spicer danced around the question, saying Trump was "not focused on statistics" and directing the press to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which he noted put out "several versions" of the employment rate. You could ask the same question for topics related to immigration, crime, and border security. What is the baseline for success if the president disputes the basic facts used to judge the results? Trump claimed repeatedly during the campaign and last month after winning that "the murder rate in the United States is the largest it's been in 45 years." In fact, FBI statistics and independent studies put it at historic lows, even after a surge in some major cities. He re-tweeted inaccurate crime statistics from a fake source claiming blacks targeted whites for violent crimes, and then refused to acknowledge any error when pressed. He suggested there were 30 million undocumented immigrants while government and nonpartisan estimates, including a study by advocates for lower immigration, consistently put the number between 11 to 12 million.



There may come a time when Trump needs the benefit of the doubt on something — a national security threat, an economic crisis or a false accusation — only to find a credibility gap that can't be closed.