What did Donald Trump do today?

He tweeted out his support for a staffer who suggested breaking the law.

Trump took to his private microblogging website today to hype up his nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, E.J. Antoni, writing "Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE." 

Trump fired the previous head, Erika McEntarfer, after the BLS released jobs numbers that were humiliatingly bad for the Trump administration. Trump's response was not to acknowledge the uncertainty his policies had created, or even to ignore them, but to insist that the numbers were "RIGGED" by vengeful bureaucrats out to get him. (Rigging those numbers, which are the result of publicly available data, is effectively impossible without getting caught—and nobody, including Trump, has shown any evidence of this.)

Antoni will be under pressure to produce less embarrassing numbers for Trump, a tall order since the effect of Trump's chaotic governance and crippling import taxes are already being felt. (Businesses rarely go on hiring sprees when they don't have confidence that the economy will remain strong.) But he's already hit on a novel solution: don't release any monthly numbers at all.

It's hard to overstate how disastrous that plan would be. American businesses are completely reliant on accurate and timely economic statistics, whether they are good news or bad. But in addition to being a bad idea, it's also against the law for the BLS to simply refuse to do its job.

In other BLS news, the agency released its core inflation report for July. It's not good news for anyone who wants lower prices: it was up 3.1% over last July, the largest increase in five months, with higher prices mirroring the higher rates of import taxes imposed by Trump's tariff declarations.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who can't handle the consequences of their actions should step aside and let someone more capable do the job. 

• You can't run a business, or a country, if all you're willing to hear is praise and good news. 

• Ignoring problems doesn't make them go away.