With Tweet, Trump breaks yet another taboo
WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump on Friday shattered several decades of protocol — and possibly violated a federal directive — by hinting strongly that the monthly U.S. jobs report would be a rosy one 69 minutes before its release.
In an 11-word Twitter post, Trump jolted financial markets and provided the latest example of how he is reshaping the presidency to fit his freewheeling impulses, pushing aside years of tight controls on the public release of sensitive material, controls that were put in place by Republicans and Democrats.
“Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning,” Trump tweeted at 7:21 a.m.
Trump, like past presidents, is given a preview of the sensitive report before its official release, but a 1985 directive issued by the Reagan administration requires that the executive branch not comment on the information until an hour after it is made public.
Within seconds of Trump’s post, the U.S. dollar strengthened and Treasury yields rose, as investors anticipated the strong report they thought Trump had foreshadowed. They appear to have read Trump’s tweet correctly. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 223,000 jobs were created in May, beating expectations, and that the unemployment rate had fallen to 3.8 percent.
The jobs report episode follows 16 months of a presidency in which Trump has cast aside traditions with such frequency that practices long considered taboo are now routine, even as critics say Trump is gambling with some of the nation’s most sensitive information.
In fact, because of Trump’s penchant for blurting out sensitive information — often, apparently, simply because it is at the top of his mind — many West Wing aides and advisers privately say they are hesitant to share anything with Trump that they do not want to become public.
During the 2016 campaign, when Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, both became eligible to receive classified briefings, some intelligence officials also expressed reservations about sharing sensitive information with Trump.
On the Friday jobs report, White House officials said Trump did not breach the 1985 directive because he did not reveal what the specific number of jobs created would be, but he was clearly pleased with what the data would show.
“He didn’t give any numbers,” White House aide Larry Kudlow told reporters outside the White House on Friday. “No one revealed any numbers.”
Kudlow later told CNBC that he briefed Trump on the details of the jobs report Thursday evening on Air Force One, making clear Trump knew the specifics of the report well before he sent the Twitter message to his more-than 50 million followers.
“He chose to tweet,” Kudlow said, asserting that Trump had followed both the rules and past practices.