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'Living in a Fantasy World': Critics Pounce as Trump's CNBC Interview Goes Off the Rails
"The racism here is on steroids," said one critic about Trump's statements on immigrant farmworkers.
Aug 05, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump gave a lengthy interview to CNBC on Tuesday and critics quickly pounced on the president for telling a large number of false claims on topics ranging from monthly jobs numbers to the price of gas to international trade agreements.
Toward the start of the interview, CNBC host Joe Kernen pushed back on Trump's claims that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had "rigged" job creation numbers against him and debunked a Trump statement that the BLS had covered up negative jobs data revisions under the Biden administration until after the November 2024 presidential election.
Trump, however, insisted that his statements about hiding downward revisions until after the election were correct even though the biggest downward revisions actually occurred in August 2024, well before the election took place.
Trump is on CNBC making a case that jobs numbers are rigged -- even as MAGA-friendly host Joe Kernen tries to push back pic.twitter.com/9jAkiCDI8h
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2025
Commenting on Trump's assertion, Media Matters for America senior fellow Matt Gertz described it as "completely backwards."
"The BLS announcement on November 1 [2024] showed weak growth of 12,000 jobs in October and downward revisions to August/September of 112,000," Gertz explained on X. "Then after the election, the October figure was revised upward. Impossible to tell if Trump is lying, dumb, or sundowning."
Nick Tiriamos, the chief economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, similarly said that Trump was "getting his dates wrong" when he asserted a cover-up of negative jobs numbers given that "the big downward revision" was reported before the election took place.
Trump also made also false claims about the price of gas in the United States falling to just $2.20 per gallon, which prompted Kernen to note that the lowest prices he's seen for gas in the U.S. were $2.80 per gallon.
TRUMP: Joe, looking at energy. Energy is down $2.20 cents a barre-- a gallon for a car
KERNEN: I've seen $2.80 pic.twitter.com/6GIfGG5JJf
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2025
National security attorney Bradley Moss slammed Trump for his claim about gas prices and added that the latest data show that inflation has been accelerating in recent months as the president's tariffs begin to force companies to raise prices.
"The rest of the country is suffering from higher prices on everything, and this senile old man is living in a fantasy world in which it's simply not happening," he wrote on Bluesky.
Trump proceeded to make false claims about the trade deal he had recently struck with the European Union when he said that the agreement gave him "$600 billion to invest in anything I want." This drew the ire of Steve Peers, a professor of E.U. and human rights law at Royal Holloway University of London.
"Well no, it's a vague, nonbinding, unwritten nonstatement about companies' future investment plans, not cash for him to personally control," Peers commented on Bluesky. "But enjoy your weird demented fantasy, I guess."
Another eye-popping Trump statement came when he tried to defend the use of immigrant labor in the American agricultural industry by claiming that the immigrants had unique physical attributes that were absent from American workers.
"People that live in the inner city are not doing that work," Trump said of the prospects of American citizens picking crops. "They've tried, we've tried, everybody tried. They don't do it. These people [immigrants] do it naturally. Naturally... they don't get a bad back, because if they get a bad back, they die."
Trump on undocumented farm workers: "People that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They've tried, we've tried, everybody tried. They don't do it. These people do it naturally. Naturally ... they don't get a bad back, because if they get a bad back, they die." pic.twitter.com/HxXtKtIPLa
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2025
This statement drew the attention of Branden McEuen, a historian at Wayne State University who specializes in teaching about the history of the eugenics movement. Specifically, McEuen linked Trump's statement to past racist beliefs about people of color being genetically predisposed to engage in manual labor.
"Trump saying people of color are naturally suited to farm labor sure sounds a lot like the slaveholders that said slaves were naturally inclined to servitude," he remarked.
SiriusXM radio host Michelangelo Signorile picked up a similar vibe from Trump's statement about farmworkers.
"The racism here is on steroids, as Trump tried to make [the] case to MAGA that farmers need exemptions," he wrote. "[Trump] says brown people do hard labor 'naturally' and don't get [a] bad back, while also saying they've tried to replace them with people 'in the inner city' but they can't get them to do the work."
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By Fast-Tracking LNG, Trump Is Putting Big Oil Above the People
President Trump made it clear in his campaign that his apparent priority was to uplift struggling Americans. This is simply and totally at odds with his promise to “drill, baby, drill.”
Jan 24, 2025
On Day One of his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an assortment of executive orders to reverse steps taken by the Biden administration to mitigate climate change. He replaced those steps with orders meant to enrich a variety of corporate interests, the most prevalent being the oil and gas industry. In less than 24 hours, Trump froze crucial clean energy funds that America needs from the Inflation Reduction Act, presented the Arctic to corporate polluters on a silver platter, and prepared to turbocharge dirty energy exports.
One of the most striking executive orders is one that calls for the unfettered expansion of methane gas exports, or LNG. In this order, there is very specific, seemingly-tailored language that policy researchers confirmed is meant to expedite the approval of Delfin LNG, a floating offshore facility that the former administration refused to greenlight due to widespread changes in “project ownership, design, financing, and operations” that had been made since the project’s original approval in 2017. In short, it’s a carbon bomb project that would be responsible for 92 million metric tons of pollution annually—equivalent to 24 coal plants.
Last week during a confirmation hearing for transportation secretary, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made sure to call on nominee former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) to approve permits for several oil and gas export terminals while accusing the Biden administration of “slow walking” the Delfin project. It seems that this executive order will only help aid this company in a quick turnaround to move forward while disregarding environmental review.
As rapid oil and gas expansion will burden Americans with higher prices and dump even more pollution into our air and water, Big Oil and their political mouthpieces will line their pockets more than ever before.
However, Delfin is just one of 14 pending LNG export facilities poised to be rapidly approved by the Trump administration. In new research from Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen, we examined announced supply agreements between exporters and LNG buyers to find that 76 million metric tons per year of LNG is under agreement to be sold from all of these facilities. The supply agreements executed so far represent an obscene amount of climate pollution—at least 510 million metric tons per year, equivalent to that of 135 coal plants.
These numbers are staggering not just for the climate impact, but for the impact on American consumers. Before the second Trump term even began, former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm warned that LNG exports could outpace global fuel demand. More LNG exports could precipitate a sharp increase in domestic gas prices leaving American consumers with higher energy bills.
While these 14 pending LNG projects have publicly disclosed buyers, there are several more pending LNG projects that could also pick up speed in the next few months. Another major executive order, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” will have the Trump administration rolling back several of the Biden administration's achievements aimed at protecting the Arctic. It would also prioritize the development of the Alaska LNG facility.
The long delayed project, which is set to be one of the largest LNG export terminals in the U.S., was approved by the Biden administration in 2022. But the massive $44 billion boondoggle, which involves building an 800-mile pipeline across Alaska, has always been too risky for the private sector. That’s why the state of Alaska has been lobbying for public financing—including via a scheme to loot clean energy loan funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. If the Trump administration successfully steers our tax dollars towards Alaska LNG, it will mean lighting the fuse of a carbon bomb 10 times dirtier than the Willow Project.
President Trump made it clear in his campaign that his apparent priority was to uplift struggling Americans. This is simply and totally at odds with his promise to “drill, baby, drill”—as rapid oil and gas expansion will burden Americans with higher prices and dump even more pollution into our air and water, Big Oil and their political mouthpieces will line their pockets more than ever before. These Day One executive orders, and the giveaways to oil and gas they offer, confirm that Trump has already abandoned the people he once again pledged to serve and put profit first instead.
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Calls for Windfall Tax Grow as ExxonMobil Smashes Big Oil Profit Record With $56 Billion Haul
"Enough is enough," said one advocate. "It's time to fight back against the politicians and Big Oil CEOs who put their billions before the health and safety of our families, our communities, and our climate."
Jan 31, 2023
As ExxonMobil on Tuesday joined other U.S. oil companies in reporting record 2022 earnings amid rising gas prices, consumer and climate advocates renewed calls for a Big Oil windfall profits tax.
Texas-based ExxonMobil posted a $55.7 billion profit last year, breaking not only its own previous company record—$45 billion in 2008—but setting a historic high for the Western oil industry, according to Reuters. The company's profit is a 144% increase from 2021 and, as Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn noted, "enough money to send every person in the U.S. $178 to help offset the costs of high fossil fuel costs and gas bills."
Marathon Petroleum—the top U.S. refiner—said Tuesday that it raked in $16.4 billion last year while approving a $5 billion stock buyback, and Phillips 66 reported $8.9 billion in adjusted 2022 profit, a 253% increase from 2021.
Tuesday's earnings reports came just days after Chevron announced $35.5 billion 2022 profit, also a company record, and days before Shell, BP, and Total are all expected to follow suit on the strength of profits related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the European energy crisis.
\u201cExxon clearly knows that their profits are obscene and a political liability. That\u2019s why they\u2019re coming out so hard against a windfall profits tax.\u201d— Jamie Henn (@Jamie Henn) 1675175871
Meanwhile, the average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline crept up to over $3.50 on Tuesday, with average prices by state ranging from $3.40 in Nebraska to $4.93 in Hawaii, according to the American Automobile Association.
Last year, "families across Pennsylvania paid $5 a gallon for gas while Exxon made profits that 'smashed earnings records' and Chevron posted 'record earnings," said U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), responding to recent Big Oil profit reports. "This price gouging is simply disgusting, and I'm going to get to the bottom of it."
Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for Stop the Oil Profiteering, lamented that "while we're getting robbed at the pump, Big Oil's obscene profits are out of control and billionaire fossil fuel CEOs are getting richer and richer."
DiPaola continued:
Big Oil is shattering records precisely because of the pain the public is feeling at the pump. We're paying more for gas and electricity because Big Oil companies are gouging Americans and benefiting from a rigged system that keeps prices high in times of war and crisis. And on top of that, Big Oil CEOs are making massive bonuses and rewarding big Wall Street investors while families are having to decide between filling up their gas tanks or paying for medication and childcare.
"Enough is enough," she added. "It's time to fight back against the politicians and Big Oil CEOs who put their billions before the health and safety of our families, our communities, and our climate. We need to hold them accountable now with solutions like a windfall profits tax, and invest in clean energy solutions that can free us from expensive fossil fuels."
\u201cFossil Free Memo: Big Oil's Obscene Windfall Profits https://t.co/zOXXbzm6yw\u201d— Stop The Oil Profiteering (@Stop The Oil Profiteering) 1675184096
Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that "Big Oil has imposed a private tax on the American people—to the tune of more than $90 billion from just two companies alone."
"It's past time for the American people to take that money back," he added. "A windfall profits tax would tax Big Oil on its inflated revenues—due only to the rising global price of oil and having nothing to do with Big Oil's costs or investments—and return the money to American consumers."
\u201cYou can\u2019t make this stuff up\u2026\n\nChevron just posted their 2022 profits and they DOUBLED what they made in 2021.\n\n$36.5 BILLION in profits. \ud83e\udd2f\n\nThese profits are coming right out of your pockets.\n\nIt\u2019s time for a gas price gouging penalty to keep greedy oil companies in check.\u201d— Office of the Governor of California (@Office of the Governor of California) 1674835327
Last March, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced a bill to tax excess oil company profits and use the proceeds to pay American households a quarterly refund. That same month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which would tax windfall profits of major corporations at a rate of 95%.
While President Joe Biden has threatened to support a windfall profits tax on oil companies if they don't ramp up production, he has not yet done so.
Responding to the increasing calls for taxing excess Big Oil earnings, ExxonMobil chief financial officer Kathryn Mikells told Reuters that windfall profits taxes are "unlawful and bad policy," and would have "the opposite effect of what you are trying to achieve."
\u201cExxon made $6.3 million PER HOUR last year, while our communities paid the price for costly climate disasters the company continues to fuel. #MakePollutersPay\u201d— Mike Meno (@Mike Meno) 1675175357
In a Reuters opinion piece published Tuesday, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome and project lead for Earth4All initiative, wrote that "oil and gas companies are perhaps the most flagrant example of our upside-down world."
"Despite being responsible for the majority of the emissions that cause climate change, they continue to make higher and higher profits," she explained. "At the same time, vulnerable people in the lowest-income countries, who have done the least to cause climate change and are most impacted by the extreme weather events caused by a warming world, are getting poorer."
"There is absolutely no reason not to tax windfall profits in all sectors, in particular when they have been made during periods of scarcity and speculation when the rest of the world is worse off," Dixson-Declève added. "Ending tax incentives and subsidies for fossil fuels is simply a no-brainer in a world where climate change is already costing untold financial and human losses every year."
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