No report on the current state of the economy would be complete without the Pulitzer Prize-winning heckling from the economic fool Paul Krugman.

The unemployment numbers for May were just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Even though unemployment is sky-high compared to what it was pre-pandemic lockdown, the actual numbers defied the worst-case scenarios that were predicted of 20% or more.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 13.3% in May from 14.7%, and 2.5 million jobs were added — a surprisingly positive reading in the midst of a recession that has paralyzed the economy in the wake of the viral pandemic.”

The May job gain suggests that businesses have quickly been recalling workers as states have reopened their economies.”

Other evidence has also shown that the job market meltdown triggered by the coronavirus has bottomed out. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits has declined for nine straight weeks. And the total number of people receiving such aid has essentially leveled off.”

Now, these numbers are still not great. Not when you consider that pre-pandemic lockdown unemployment was 3.5%, and the rate of minority unemployement is depressing (16.8% for black workers, 17.6% for Hispanic workers), considering that just a few months ago it was at a historic all-time low. The economic devastation of the COVID-19 lockdown cannot be overstated, and will have aftereffects in the decades to come. And the May unemployment numbers do not factor in the aftereffects of the rioting in major cities that has crippled or destroyed many businesses, some of them small businesses, some of them minority-owned.

Still, 13.3% unemployment is a fair mark off where the numbers were expected to be, and that should be a good thing, right?

Enter economic “genius” Paul Krugman, who decided that he needed to go for the full tinfoil crazy because ORANGE MAN BAD. In the middle of contemplating why the predictions were off on Twitter, Krugman decided to toss in this gem:

This being the Trump era, you can't completely discount the possibility that they've gotten to the BLS, but it's much more likely that the models used to produce these numbers — they aren't really raw data — have gone haywire in a time of pandemic 3/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 5, 2020

Apparently, ORANGE MAN IS SO BAD that he has even manipulated the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make the unemployment numbers better than expected! That conspiracy-level crazy immediately got smacked down – by a former Obama administration advisor.

You can 100% discount the possibility that Trump got to the BLS. Not 98% discount, not 99.9% discount, but 100% discount.

BLS has 2,400 career staff of enormous integrity and one political appointee with no scope to change this number. https://t.co/Cden6rQyN6

— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) June 5, 2020

Krugman honestly thought that he could toss out the accusation that President Trump could have gotten an entire federal department to cook the unemployment numbers JUST to make things sound better? The president couldn’t even make a phone call to Ukraine without someone “whistleblowing” it out! How did Krugman think that worked? Trump simply called up the BLS and said, “you owe your Don a service“??? This is the kind of gobsmacking stupidity that can only be fixed by handing Krugman another Pulitzer.

Krugman realized that he had overstretched and started backtracking.

And as I look at the data, I'm starting to believe that the modest job gains may well have been real, not an artifact of the models. I was already on record saying that predictions of a huge job loss didn't look right 2/ https://t.co/v6KvqREFWx

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 5, 2020

You have to admire how he’s couched the new numbers as “the old numbers couldn’t have been THAT severe” now that he’s been caught huffing glue for his Trump Derangement Syndrome high.

The unemployment numbers are still terrible in comparison to where we were back in January. Reasonable people know and blame the coronavirus pandemic (and China) for tanking not just our economy, but the world’s economy. We don’t yet know the impact of the riots will be on the economy OR the current pandemic lockdown. What we do know is that Donald Trump’s numbers right now look bad (the election is still way too far off for these poll numbers to reflect the reality of November). Democrats, the left, and the media want to keep them that way. The poll numbers will improve if the economic recovery looks to have begun. Paul Krugman was already very deep into his own TDS. His tweets today just reveal how deep the crazy goes.

Featured image: Pauk Krugman via Flickr by 00Joshi, cropped, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0