Brooks and Bouie on economic warning signs

From today's weaker than expected jobs report to the president rebranding the Pentagon, it's been another jam-packed week of news. For analysis, we turn now to the analysis of Brooks and Bowie. That's David Brooks and Jamel Bowie, both columnists at The New York Times. Jonathan Capehart is away this evening. It's good to see you both. So as we reported, the August jobs report is out today, and the numbers are fairly bleak. The U.S. economy added just 22,000 jobs last month, well short of forecasts. The unemployment rate ticked up to its highest number in four years.

A setback for President Trump, David, but it could, on the other hand, bolster his argument that the Fed should cut interest rates when it meets later this month.

How do you see it? Well, inflation is still over what the Fed wants. It's 2.9 and they want to set a target of 2. So they're in a bit of a pickle. They might cut a little, about 25 basis points, but it's hard to see them cutting a lot more because of the inflation threat. This is caused by, as Austin Gould sort of suggested earlier in the program, I think it's caused by population. And immigrants, whether you like high immigration or don't, they're an economic boon to the country.

And if you take away all that labor, you're taking away a source of economic strength. One of the things that was more interesting about the report was that the number of manufacturing jobs lost last month was 12,000. And then it breaks the total number of lost manufacturing

jobs under the Trump administration of 70,000 people. That's not what he was promising when he was running. So he's really not helping. And finally the most depressing thing for me and the most concerning is attitudes about what's happening. The Wall Street Journal had a poll out earlier this week where they asked people, do you think there's a chance, any chance your living standard will go up? Only 25% of Americans say that. That's the lowest

level since 1986. Something weird has happened about people's view of the country and the economy. There's a way to predict how people will view the economy based on economic statistics. And up until COVID, the statistics

and the consumer sentiment rose and fall together. After COVID, they're totally diverged. The economic statistics look pretty good, but the people's view of the economy is cratering. And that's just a generalized loss of faith, a growth of pessimism.

Yeah.

And Jamel, for the first time since 2021, there are now more unemployed Americans than job openings. What does that tell us about the direction of the labor market and how does it shape the larger political debate?

Well, the labor market's clearly weakening, and I think that it is something that is going to be a real challenge for the administration. It's, I think, important to recognize that Trump won re-election, or won this second term, on essentially an economic argument.

I will lower the cost of goods and services, I will ensure prosperity, and he won narrowly on that basis. And if his term thus far has been characterized by job losses, by slowdowns, by rising inflation, by the exact opposite of what he promised, this to me signals that the administration and the president's party is simply in trouble going into the end of this year and the beginning

of next year and the beginning of midterm elections. Say nothing of the upcoming elections in New Jersey and Virginia, where we'll start to get a sense of where the public stands with regards to Republican governance. The president seizing on these jobs numbers to hammer the Fed and to hammer Democrats,

how effective is that line of attack? I think it probably pleases people to hammer the Fed. I mean, they're unelected. A lot of people don't like it. Republicans don't like it. But just to give Jerome Powell credit where it's due,

never before in American history have we brought down inflation without a recession. And he did it, along with the other Fed governors. So I think what they've achieved over the last several years, to me, is kind of remarkable. But no president likes the Fed because he wants the Fed to pump up the, or pump up, or pump down interest rates, if you can pump down something, in order to goose the economy for an election. But that's precisely why we have an independent Fed.

Right. Well, on that point, I mean, President Trump's nominee for the open Fed governor role, Stephen at his confirmation hearing this past week said he wouldn't fully resign his position at the White House while filling this vacant seat on the Federal Reserve's board, if confirmed. So how troubling is this dual role arrangement

for the institutional independence of the Fed? I mean, I would call it very troubling. It's very clear that the president wants to undermine Fed independence, and he's trying to do everything he can to make that happen. The accusations against Lisa Cook, the supposed firing of Cook is part of this.

And I would consider this another attack on Fed independence for exactly the reasons David described. He wants to lower rates. He wants essentially to be fed to act as a kind of backstop to his own irresponsible

set of economic policies with regards to tariffs and immigration. We'll say more about that, this notion that the president is treating independent economic bodies as tools of political strategy rather than tools of technocratic governance. Yeah I mean he's a personalist, he thinks the office of the presidency is not something that belongs to the American people but it belongs to him and this has been a pretty consistent theme, in fact an

amazingly consistent theme throughout his entire administration. And we relied on the idea that some things are sacred, some things you just don't know. There are lines. We all have these, like in journalism. We're not going to be journalists and also run for office as a Democrat and Republican.

We're just not going to do that. There's a line. weren't intuitively and instinctively appalled by the idea of crossing that line, shows that just the norm has gone away.

As we reported earlier this evening, President Trump signed an executive order today renaming the Defense Department the Department of War, his latest move to project military toughness. You can see the old sign there at the Pentagon coming down. Jamel, what does this rebranding suggest about, or rather, how should we understand the symbolism

behind all of this as we also look at the administration's policy and its approach

using the military?

Yeah. Part of me wants to say that this is just kind of silly. I mean, first of all, the executive order specifically says you can call the Department of Defense Department of War as well if you want to, but officially it is still the Department of Defense, right? That's established by congressional statute.

That's not something the president can kind of just change unilaterally. I suppose you can say that beyond whatever PR thing he's looking at, it's supposed to signal the return of as Secretary of Defense, I'm not going to call him Secretary of War, Secretary of Defense, Bid Hagseff, says maximum lethality.

And I suppose it's demonstrated by the recent attack on the boat, allegedly, of Venezuelan drug dealers. But as has emerged out of that, what we see are a lot of questions about the decision-making that went into that, about the legality of that strike. This recommitment to legality appears

to also be kind of a PR thing. Like I don't see anything strategic or interested in the national security interests of the United States. What I see here is a president who understands the entire world as a kind of television show,

and Secretary of War sounds better for TV than Secretary of Defense.

Do you see a through line here? The rebranding of the Pentagon, the deadly strikes on this alleged drug running boat off the coast of Venezuela without congressional approval, the president sending federal troops into L.A. and D.C. and threatening to do the same in Chicago.

I mean, what story is the president trying to tell about himself and the power of the

presidency? Yeah, I don't think it rises to TV. I think it's more Call of Duty. And, you know, the Pentagon was renamed in the late 40s. And the people who were there when it was renamed were people like James Forrestal, who was Secretary of Defense, and then later George Marshall, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was Omar Bradley.

Literally, the guys who won World War II. And they did not have anything to prove about their machismo. And I found that the people I admire who really have shown toughness in combat, men and women, they don't need to brag about it. They don't need to say Secretary of War. They're like, no, I'm not going to do that. You'll never hear one of them say, hey, let's lock and load.

They just don't talk that way. And this crew, to go from George Marshall to Pete Hegseth, that's a long way. And I'm a conservative. I believe government should be careful about assuming assuming what it knows, because the world is really complicated. And sending a missile at some ship where you don't know what's on the ship, that's just foolish.

It's killing people, potentially, well, absolutely, when you don't even know what they're doing. There's a reason we board ships, because you want to have some evidence that you're actually going after drug dealers rather than whatever, some random 11 people on a boat.

And so the targeting of ships using acts of war, what should be acts of law enforcement, really does cross a line to me.

In the time that remains, I wanna talk to you both about the New York mayor's race, largely because the mayor, Eric Adams, said tonight that he is going to stay in the race and run for re-election. This is amid the reporting that the Trump administration

is considering nominating him to serve as ambassador to Saudi Arabia to prompt him to exit the mayoral race and consolidate the opposition to the Democratic Socialist candidate Zohran Amdami, potentially benefiting Andrew Cuomo. Jamel, why is Donald Trump so invested in making sure that Andrew Cuomo is the next mayor of New York City?

I think Donald Trump, first of all, if he could have had anything in his life, it might have been to be mayor of New York City. I think in a lot of ways he's a big city mayor that escaped containment. But I think he sees the elevation of Mamdani to the mayorship as just something he thinks is bad for New York. I suppose he believes it's bad for the country.

He doesn't see it in his political interests and wants to see an ally, Cuomo, who has given every indication that he would cooperate with the administration, especially with immigration enforcement in the New York mayor's office.

I think that the strategy here is probably misguided. New Yorkers do not approve of Trump and giving Mamdani an opportunity to basically run against Trump, which is what Adam's dropping out would do, I think would only redound to Mamdani's benefit.

It's striking, you've got a right-wing populist in Trump targeting a left-wing populist in Mamdani in this political era that, as you so often say,

is defined by the rise of populism. Yeah, though I do like sending people to ambassadorships to get them out of populism. DAVID BROOKS, The Washington Post": Yes, though I do like sending people to ambassadorships to get them out of the way. This is a sacred tradition. And it's happened before. I think FDR sent Joe Kennedy away. I think John F. Kennedy sent Adlai Stevenson.

There was talk, I think, of sending Chris Christie during the first Trump. So, let's good to see you both. So, let's good to see you both.

Have a great weekend.