My first impulse was to laugh. I can do that because I am not an American. If I was I would cry.

The national job report came out Friday in the USA. The numbers weren’t good. Turns out job growth in America was significantly weaker in May and June than had been previously reported. To phrase it differently, the US economy is weakening.

President Donald Trump acted immediately. He also acted instinctively.

Faced with the unflattering numbers, he fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As he sees it, she manipulated the numbers to make him look bad.

That slow job growth might signify that business is uncertain of his policies, tariffs on trade with America’s allies, a record national debt and a government that apparently has no clue what it is doing, never crossed his mind. No surprise there.

You can be sure the next Commissioner won’t make the mistake of reporting the figures accurately if they don’t fit with the president’s narrative. Truth in Donald Trump’s America is whatever he says it is. Of course, now that there has been political interference, no-one can believe the accuracy of the numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A key economic indicator has been sacrificed to one man’s ego.

That is the United States of America in 2025. When truth is swapped for fiction to satisfy the politicians, you know you are in a third world country, one that is quickly becoming the laughing stock of the world.

What a pity.