Fox Host Confronts Labor Secretary Over Trump’s Terrible Economy
During Friday media appearances, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer tried to dance around questions about the weak labor market under President Donald Trump. But Fox News, of all outlets, wouldn’t let her get away with it.
Chavez-DeRemer told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that the shutdown sent “a momentum of jobs gains” to a “screeching halt.” The claim was too outrageous even for Bartiromo.
“Well, I mean, you know the data, though. You know where we are. I mean, we’ve had three months of slowing jobs,” the host observed, asking Chavez-DeRemer for a sense of the “jobs picture today.”
Chavez-DeRemer evaded, touting supposed investment, trade deals, and growth in gross domestic product under Trump, while expressing the importance of skilled workers. Finally getting around to the job numbers, she put it delicately: “So while we’ve seen the numbers kind of hold steady, the goal is to not stop the momentum.”
LORI CHAVEZ-DeREMER: We've been on a momentum of job gains.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 3, 2025
BARTIROMO: You know the data though. We've had three months of slowing jobs. pic.twitter.com/oTxXciWgPT
In reality, the jobs numbers haven’t been holding steady. Due to the government shutdown, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release its much-anticipated monthly jobs report for September on Friday, as planned. But other recent reports have been consistently disappointing.
This week, the BLS reported the worst hiring rate since June—and before that since before the pandemic and Great Recession era. Then the payroll-processing firm ADP found that the U.S. private sector lost jobs for the third time in four months, shedding 32,000 jobs in September.
In another media appearance later Friday morning, CNN’s John Berman didn’t let Chavez-DeRemer off the hook. When the labor secretary attributed poor job numbers to what the Trump administration “inherited from the Biden administration,” before lamenting that the ongoing shutdown slows the administration’s “momentum” to “grow those jobs numbers,” Berman challenged whether there is indeed any momentum.
“We have the strongest economy in the world,” Chavez-DeRemer insisted, leading Berman to cut in: “Jobs economy? Do we have the strongest jobs economy in the world? Do we have the strongest jobs economy compared to last year, when there were hundreds of thousands of jobs added each month?”
“Absolutely,” said Chavez-DeRemer, going on to blame the accuracy of BLS data—which recalls how Trump ousted the agency’s commissioner for a MAGA lackey following its abysmal July jobs report. “Because we saw those revisions under the Biden administration. That’s why this president has called on the modernization and streamlining of BLS to understand that we need modern information. We need to have accurate information.”