Mar 10, 2017

Trump: "Phony" jobs report is now "real"

Dan Primack, author of Pro Rata

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported that the economy added 235,000 jobs in February, and that the unemployment rate fell to 4.7%. President Trump touted these better-than-expected figures, even though he has dismissed such reports as a "joke" and a "hoax."

Sean Spicer was asked during today's press briefing if Trump still believes the BLS data is bogus. Spicer said that Trump asked to be quoted directly:

They may have been phony in the past but it's very real now.

VIDEO of Spicer quoting Trump on jobs reports: "They may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now." pic.twitter.com/ewpXW0n6uC — Axios (@axios) March 10, 2017

The Labor Department has not changed its process for collecting or analyzing jobs data since Trump took office.

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Louisiana braces for 3rd hurricane in 2 months as Tropical Storm Zeta nears

Municipality workers clean the streets of garbage in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, on Tuesday that was left by Zeta, which struck the Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 1 Hurricane a day earlier — causing no major damage to infrastructure. Photo: Medios y Media/Getty Images

Tropical Storm Zeta is expected to strengthen back into a hurricane and bring dangerous storm surge conditions to parts of the northern Gulf Coast on Wednesday, per the National Hurricane Center.

The state of play: Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) requested a pre-landfall Federal Declaration of Emergency in a letter to President Trump on Tuesday, ahead of the storm's expected arrival south of New Orleans.

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Coronavirus dashboard

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

  1. Politics: Obama: Trump is "jealous of COVID's media coverage" — Axios-Ipsos poll: Federal response has only gotten worse.
  2. Health: Hospitals face a crush — 13 states set single-day case records last week.
  3. Business: Winter threat spurs new surge of startup activity.
  4. Media: Pandemic causes TV providers to lose the most subscribers ever.
  5. States: Nearly two dozen Minnesota cases traced to three Trump campaign events.
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Trump's campaign website hacked

A screenshot of the Trump campaign website after it was hacked.

The Trump campaign website briefly went down and its "About" page was modified after hackers attacked the site Tuesday evening.

The big picture: With just seven days before the election, the hackers emulated the FBI and declared on the "About" page that: "this was seized. the world has had enough of the fake-news spreaded [sic] daily by president donald j trump. it is time to allow the world to know truth." Two addresses linked to the cryptocurrency Monero appeared on the site. Trump campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh in a statement said no sensitive data had been exposed in the attack.

Go deeper: Twitter hack raises fears of an unstable election