Trump economic adviser bafflingly says ‘if people were unhappy, it’d show up in the data’

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President Donald Trump’s economic adviser said that if voters were dissatisfied with the economy, it would show up in the economic data — even as economic data shows Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the economy.

Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council in the White House, appeared on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper on Sunday.

The interview came two days after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs numbers showing that the U.S. economy added only 29,000 jobs in September, which was 60,000 fewer than expected.

Tapper pushed Hassett by saying that people do not think the economy is good, so are they wrong? Hassett responded by pointing to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey.

“The Republicans who are surveyed say the economy is great. Democrats who are surveyed say the economy is like the worst since the Great Depression, and the Independents agree with the Democrats,” he said.

The University of Michigan Survey of Consumers showed that in September, consumer sentiment declined by four points, with Republican sentiment now 20 percentage points lower than in January of this year and Democratic consumer sentiment dropped 13 percentage points during the same amount of time.

But Hassett added that, looking at the data, the Michigan poll called most independents Democrats.

“And so it's saying that people are really unhappy, but I just think it's a bad poll,” he said. “But again, if people were unhappy, it'd show up in the data.”

“It seems to be showing up in the data, just not the data you're looking at,” Tapper responded.

During the same interview, Tapper asked Hassett about the fact that Trump said when he ran for president in 2024 that he could get mortgage rates down to three percent, but they jumped this year to seven percent.

“President Trump hasn't failed to deliver at all,” Hassett said. “The economy is booming, and what you have to do is you have to look at the whole picture.”

Hassett pointed out that American consumers are behaving the way they would during an economic boom because housing starts and permits increased during the summer and income growth outpaced mortgage rates.

“Absolutely true, mortgage rates have to come down, and as we get inflation down to one, two percent, then that's where mortgage rates are going to head towards,” Hassett said. “But the bottom line is that in the end, yeah. Look at the hard data. People are buying houses.”

Hassett, who served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the first Trump administration, has defended Trump’s policies ranging from tariffs to the war in Iran. But polling shows Democrats with a significant advantage going into next month’s midterm elections, largely due to dissatisfaction over the war in Iran, which has caused gas prices to spike.

Tapper asked Hassett when the price of gas would decline to three dollars a gallon and when inflation would settle down to two percent, an amount that the Federal Reserve and economists say is ideal.

“The hard data are radically inconsistent with the polls,” he said. “And so, which do you believe, the government hard data or the polls that have been wrong about every single election since I can remember?”

In response, Tapper said that the government data showed that the economy added only 29,000 jobs in September.

“Oh come on, that's just last month,” Hassett said, to which Tapper pointed out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised down the July and August jobs reports by 60,000 jobs.

Hassett would receive a much more favorable audience on Fox News with Larry Kudlow, who served as the chairman of the NEC during Trump’s first tenure as president, where he said the president has “created the golden age,” touting the growth in manufacturing.

“Since President Trump took office, there are 112,000 people, including 12,000 in the supposedly weak jobs report, that are now working building factories,” he said. “As many people as are at a Michigan football game, think of that whole stadium, and they’re all building factories. And how bullish is that for the economy?”

“And Michigan keeps losing their football games,” Kudlow said.