President Donald Trump spent Thursday night praising his economic record, only for Friday’s monthly jobs report to deliver a sharply different verdict. The Labor Department reported that unemployment climbed to 4.2%, while the economy added just 29,000 jobs in September.

That hiring total was nowhere close to the 90,000 jobs experts had anticipated. The report also revised job numbers downward for previous months, adding another unwelcome detail to an already weak release.

The timing was especially brutal for Trump’s victory lap. Hours before the figures arrived, he appeared at a rally in Texas for Senate candidate Ken Paxton and insisted that the economy itself was not the problem.

“The only thing we’re doing badly at is public relations,” Trump said. He then offered a glowing assessment of his performance: “In other words, we’re doing a phenomenal job.”

Friday’s figures put that boast beside hard numbers: a 4.2% unemployment rate, 29,000 jobs added, and downward revisions for earlier months. Trump’s declaration of phenomenal success did not survive that comparison gracefully.

Public opinion polling has consistently shown that voters blame Trump and the GOP for the bad economy. The economic discontent comes amid tariffs that have increased prices and the war in Iran, which has restricted the fuel supply and caused gas prices to surge.

Trump, however, used the rally to dismiss concerns about costs rather than acknowledge them. As he has done before, he argued that affordability was an invention of the left and part of a media and Democratic partnership.

“Remember they came up with the word ‘affordability,’” Trump said. “They always come up with these words: ‘Affordability.’ So the fake news starts using it, because they’re partners with the Democrats.”

That claim is a completely false conspiracy theory. It also fits Trump’s broader pattern as a public figure, during which he has promoted numerous false conspiracies, often carrying racist messages.

Yet the Texas setting made the speech more politically revealing. The state has long been one of the GOP’s most loyal, but Paxton, Trump’s handpicked candidate, has been flailing for months and trails Democratic candidate James Talarico.

The situation is striking because Trump won Texas comfortably in 2016, 2020, and 2024, while Republicans have dominated the state for decades. The Senate contest nevertheless has Texas in play.

That shift reflects how strongly Trump’s poor economic performance is resonating with voters. The jobs report supplied fresh evidence just after Trump claimed that his administration’s only real weakness was communicating its successes.

The record from Trump’s first term also cuts against his celebration. He became the only president since the statistic has been recorded to finish a term with a net job loss.

His second term has continued the longstanding GOP tradition of economic underperformance. Trump can keep congratulating himself, but the latest labor data offers no support for his near perfect sales pitch.

He can also keep pretending that affordability was fabricated by political opponents and amplified by friendly media. But voters confronting higher prices and surging gas costs have a concrete set of numbers to weigh against his rhetoric.

For Trump, the contrast could hardly be clearer: public self praise on Thursday, disappointing employment data on Friday, and a favored candidate trailing in reliably Republican terrain. His “phenomenal job” pitch is colliding with both the economic numbers and the political response.

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