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‘Disgusting’: Trump’s Top Economic Adviser Brags About Killing 300,000 ‘High-Paying’ American Jobs
"Everybody is hurt by what he's celebrating," one public employee union official told Common Dreams. "I guess it's just par for the course from this administration, but it's still a disgusting thing to hear."
Apr 10, 2026
President Donald Trump's top economic adviser boasted on Fox Business Thursday that the government had slashed more than 300,000 "high-paying" jobs from the federal payroll during the president's first year back in office.
Asked by anchor Maria Bartiromo about the administration's efforts to cut government spending, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said it had made "a huge amount of progress."
"I think the biggest thing that we can point to is that we've cut government employment by 300,000 workers," he said. "Those are jobs that are very high-paying that are gone forever."
He claimed the cuts reduced government spending by "an unthinkable amount of money," perhaps $1 trillion over the next ten years.
He also said that the administration "reduced the deficit last year by $600 billion" through a combination of higher-than-expected economic growth, tariff revenues, and "supply side effects" of Trump's massive tax cut, which mostly benefited the wealthiest Americans while gutting the social safety net.
Dean Baker, a longtime collaborator of Hassett’s despite their opposing political beliefs, wrote on social media that Trump’s economic adviser was dramatically exaggerating the deficit reduction that occurred during the administration's first year.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the deficit was about $1.8 trillion for fiscal year 2025, just $41 billion less than the previous year and $56 billion lower than the $1.9 trillion deficit CBO projected in its most recent baseline.
"In the real world, the deficit fell... less than one-tenth of what Kevin claims," Baker said.
Trump has touted the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government employees from their "boring federal jobs" as one of his crowning achievements.
Among the agencies hit by mass layoffs were the Department of Veterans Affairs, where more than 12,700 employees got the axe; the Department of Health and Human Services, which lost more than 14,400 workers; the Social Security Administration, whose staff shrank by more than 6,600; and the Environmental Protection Agency, which lost more than 4,000 employees.
Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest labor union representing federal workers, told Common Dreams that even if slashing jobs did reduce the deficit as Hassett claimed, the harm far outweighs any such benefit—not only for the fired employees, but for the millions of Americans who depend on services they provide.
"When you say 300,000 jobs, it is a nice round number, and you link it to deficit reduction, which he was lying about," Simon said. "The fact of the matter is, the disappearance of those 300,000 jobs means degraded healthcare for our veterans; slower or nonexistent service at the Social Security Administration for the elderly and disabled who rely on Social Security for their income; and the elimination of huge swaths of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that help ensure we have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink."
"You have federal prisons absolutely overwhelmed by too many inmates and too few corrections officers, endangering public safety," she continued. "Consumer product safety has been eviscerated. There are also serious public health concerns involving substance abuse, childhood nutrition, and vaccinations."
She decried Hassett's comments as "ignorant" in light of his false claims about deficit reduction, but also "just demonstrably pretty cruel and disdainful" given the impact these job losses have on individuals, families, communities, and society as a whole.
"It's cruel," Simon said, "not only on the people who held those jobs—about a 100,000 of whom are military veterans—but the impact of the disappearance of those jobs also falls on children, the elderly, anybody who consumes agricultural products, breathes air, or relies on clean water."
"Everybody is hurt by what he's celebrating," she added. "I guess it's just par for the course from this administration, but it's still a disgusting thing to hear."
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Viral Parody Video Exposes Absurdity of Trump's Illegal Iran War
"Our goal from day one was for Iran to open the strait that didn't close until after we attacked."
Apr 09, 2026
Comedian Dave Columbo on Wednesday released a parody video that lampooned the Trump administration's contradictory and constantly changing rationales for its unconstitutional war with Iran.
In the video, which was first posted on Instagram and has since gone viral on other social media platforms, Columbo assumes the role of a White House spokesperson trying to explain what the US has achieved so far with its war, which Trump illegally launched without any congressional authorization more than a month ago.
"This is a victory for the US," Columbo says at the start of the video. "Because our goal from day one was for Iran to open the strait that didn't close until after we attacked, which was completely controlled by their military that we had total dominance over. And it was a waterway that we could have taken over, but instead we asked for help that we didn't need, but we'll remember our allies did not give us."
10/10. No notes. pic.twitter.com/YQ3JPNIR02
— Barney Panofsky's Best Intentions (@mynamesnotgordy) April 8, 2026
Columbo then explains that this purported victory has only come about due to "a FIFA Peace Prize recipient's threat to annihilate a civilization in order to liberate them."
The comedian next touts the administration's success in changing the Iranian regime from "an old man who hates us to his younger son, who hates us for those reasons, and that we killed his father."
Columbo acknowledges that the administration is unsure about "the status of Iran's nuclear capabilities that we obliterated last year, but were going to be a problem in two weeks," before boasting that Iran now has "more money and control over the strait than they had when they made the old deal that we ended because it was terrible."
While Columbo's video is intended as satire, much of it simply relies on arguments that the Trump administration has made throughout the course of the war, such as the president's demands that NATO allies give help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that he also says is unnecessary given US military strength.
As of this writing, the Iran War has cost US taxpayers more than $45 billion, and the Strait of Hormuz has still not reopened.
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‘This Depraved Idiot Is Out of Control’: With Middle East in Flames, Trump Eyes ‘Next Conquest’
"We cannot live this way," wrote one journalist in response to President Donald Trump's ominous threat to start another new war.
Apr 09, 2026
US President Donald Trump said late Wednesday that the American military is already looking ahead to its "next conquest" as the Middle East remains embroiled in a deadly military conflict that Trump and his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unleashed six weeks ago.
In a late-night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said US forces will remain "in place" and "around" Iran until a "real agreement" is reached to end the war, as the two-week ceasefire the president and Iranian leaders announced late Tuesday hangs by a thread due to Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon.
After threatening a "bigger, and better, and stronger" assault on Iran if peace talks collapse, Trump said the US military is "Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest"—even as senior administration officials expressed concerns that the president's declarations of victory in Iran were premature.
Branislav Slantchev, an international relations expert who teaches political science at the University of California San Diego, wrote in response to Trump's post that "this depraved idiot is out of control."
"We cannot live this way," added journalist Marisa Kabas.
Trump, who has bombed more countries than any other president in modern US history despite campaigning on "no new wars," did not name any potential targets of the American military's "next conquest" in his Wednesday night post. But the president has lobbed threats against Cuba and Greenland repeatedly in recent months, threatening to seize both island nations by force. Last week, Trump asked Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion military budget for the coming fiscal year—a request that included tens of billions for new battleships and fighter jets.
During a speech at a Saudi-backed investment summit in Miami last month, Trump touted the US military's illegal attacks on Venezuela and Iran before declaring, "Cuba is next."
"Pretend I didn't say that," the president added.
In a separate Truth Social post Wednesday night, Trump hit out at NATO and characterized Greenland, in all-caps, as a "BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE."
Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, argued that Trump is "lashing out because his war on a whim did not result in the hoped-for ‘Venezuela’ in Iran but a historic debacle instead."
The Intercept's Nick Turse reported last month that amid the Iran war, a top Pentagon official "revealed that US wars in the Western Hemisphere are also expanding, unveiling an effort dubbed 'Operation Total Extermination.'"
Joseph Humire, the Pentagon's acting assistant secretary for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, told lawmakers that the US military "supported 'bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border'" in early March, according to Turse.
"The US–Ecuadorian campaign has already strayed into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by 'ricochet effect' on March 3, leaving an unexploded 500-pound bomb lying in Colombia’s border region," Turse reported. "In addition to his wars in the Western hemisphere, Trump has also launched attacks on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during his second term—most of them sites of US conflicts during the war on terror."
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'Truly Insane': Pentagon Threatened Pope After He Condemned Trump's Military Attacks
The US "has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world," a top official told the Vatican's US representative. "The Catholic Church had better take its side."
Apr 09, 2026
Pope Leo, the first American to be named the head of the worldwide Catholic Church, has spoken out against President Donald Trump's policies frequently this year as the US has invaded Venezuela and Iran and threatened Cuba's 10 million people with an oil blockade that has crippled the island's economy and healthcare system—and according to new reports, his criticism has followed a warning from a Pentagon official who demanded the Vatican take the "side" of the White House in foreign disputes.
The Free Press originally reported this week that after the pope's "State of the World" address on January 9, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby called Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican's US diplomatic representative, to Washington.
Colby told Pierre that the US "has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world."
"The Catholic Church had better take its side," he said, according to The Free Press.
Another Pentagon official alluded to the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy ordered an attack on Pope Boniface VIII and forced seven successive popes to relocate from Rome to Avignon in France.
According to Christopher Hale of the Substack blog Letters From Leo, who independently confirmed the meeting had taken place, Vatican officials took the remarks about the Avignon papacy as "a threat to use military force against the Holy See."
"Bringing up the Avignon papacy as a threat is truly insane," said progressive organizer Jonathan Cohn.
The pope is unlikely to visit the US during Trump's presidency as a result of the meeting, Hale reported. Pope Leo rejected an invitation to the White House for the United States' 250th anniversary celebration on July 4, and is reportedly planning to visit the island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean that day, where thousands of North African immigrants have arrived as they attempt to reach Europe.
The pope, reported Hale, "is too deliberate a man to have chosen that date by accident."
The Pentagon meeting took place days after Pope Leo angered the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, by lamenting the fact that "a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies.”
In the speech that enraged Pete Hegseth and top Pentagon officials, Pope Leo XIV said: “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”
“War is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.
“The… pic.twitter.com/q76XtqxNXU
— Christopher Hale (@ChristopherHale) April 8, 2026
He made the comments days after the US invaded Venezuela, killing dozens of people and abducting President Nicolás Maduro, and as the US continued its boat bombing campaign that began last year in Latin America.
Since then, the pope has made numerous statements in recent weeks as the US joined Israel in bombing Iran and Trump issued increasingly bellicose threats to attack the country's population of 93 million people.
He said on Tuesday, hours before a two-week ceasefire was reached between the US, Iran, and Israel, that Trump's threat to wipe out the "whole civilization" of Iran was "truly unacceptable."
"There are certainly issues of international law here, but even more, it is a moral question concerning the good of the people as a whole, in its entirety," said Pope Leo. “Let’s look for solutions in a peaceful way.”
He also appeared to reject a call from Hegseth last month when the defense secretary asked Americans to pray for US troops in Iran "in the name of Jesus Christ."
"Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war," said the Pope in his homily on Palm Sunday days later. "He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: 'Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.'"
The New Republic reported that prior to the January meeting Pierre was called to, there were no public records of meetings between the Vatican and Pentagon officials, "let alone an instance in which the world power suggested that it could force the Bishop of Rome into captivity."
When asked about the meeting on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance—a Catholic convert—at first claimed not to know who the Vatican's US representative was, before saying the reported was "uncorroborated."
BREAKING: JD Vance initially says he doesn't know who Cardinal Christophe Pierre is — until recently Pope Leo XIV’s ambassador to the United States — then, once reminded, declines to comment on the Pentagon's January meeting with the cardinal or on the ”bitter lecture” Under… pic.twitter.com/Qknnuh0wxv
— Christopher Hale (@ChristopherHale) April 8, 2026
The Defense Department also denied The Free Press' account of the meeting, saying the characterization was "highly exaggerated and distorted.”
Writer Pedro Gonzalez noted that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon discussed strategies to "take down" the late Pope Frances with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to files on Epstein that were released by the Department of Justice.
"It is for this and other reasons that people take seriously the report about the Trump-Vance administration threatening Pope Leo to bend the knee or else," said Gonzalez. "These people are insane. Their hunger for power is bottomless. Moral resistance will be met with intimidation and threats, whether it’s in America or in Rome."
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