CNN Anchor Twists Knife On ‘Brutal’ Trump Numbers: ‘Nothing But Bad News’

CNN anchor Kasie Hunt was unsparing as she reported on “brutal” economic numbers for President Donald Trump at the stock market’s closing bell.

Friday morning saw the release of a new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that showed much worse than expected growth in employment, with just 22,000 jobs created amid expectations of almost quadruple that number.

It’s the first jobs report since Trump fired the last BLS commissioner, and one which a Fox Business Network panel called “brutal.”

On Friday’s edition of CNN’s The Arena, Hunt piled on the bad news as the markets closed amid an end-of-week slide and an economy she said is “cracking”:

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I’m Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. Happy Friday to all of us, shall we say.

There is breaking news as we come on the air. We are just under a minute from the closing bell on Wall Street. Right now, the Dow down around half a point. The S&P down about 4/10 of a point. And of course, the tech heavy Nasdaq seems to be faring a little bit better today down just about 1/10 of a point.

This slide coming in the wake of a brutal jobs report indicating that President Trump’s policies appear to be weakening the U.S. economy.

[16:00:09]

And there it is. There is the bell. It gets cheered like this every, the crowd there obviously having the chance to do this.

But of course, it has been a difficult day from an economic perspective. Just 22,000 jobs were added in August that caused the unemployment rate to rise for the first time in nearly four years. The jobless rate, 4.3 percent, is now the highest it’s been since 2021.

You may remember what was happening back then. Manufacturing jobs fell for the fourth straight month, which means America has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs so far this year. Now, of course, this is a president who ran on trying to bring back just these kinds of jobs, bring factories back to America. He promised a golden age.

Today’s numbers. Nothing but bad news on that front. So, let’s be real. Almost eight months in, it is definitely Donald Trump’s economy now. His tariffs, his strong arming of businesses, and perhaps most notably of the Federal Reserve, the markets facing a massive amount of uncertainty.

We’re starting to get a little bit of a clearer picture of what that means because today, faced with data showing that the economy is cracking, the administration’s explanation — well, it’s basically just to blame anyone except President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD LUTNICK, COMMERCE SECRETARY: The holdovers from the Biden administration were just — they’re just bent against the president’s success. They’re rooting against America and against Donald Trump. And that’s got to end. KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: This jobs number

was certainly a little bit of a disappointment right now. But one of the things — there was a Goldman Sachs study that came out yesterday that showed that because the BLS hasn’t really done a good job on its seasonal adjustment in August, that they tend to revise this number up by almost 70,000 jobs, would give you the revised number a month later.

LORI CHAVEZ-DEREMER, LABOR SECRETARY: Jerome Powell should be embarrassed by this report because he has not done his job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right.

Watch above via CNN’s The Arena.