Larry Kudlow, President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser, asserted Sunday that while he hoped Trump doesn’t again comment on jobs numbers before they’re released publicly, Trump’s actions weren’t improper.
Trump tweeted Friday, before the government’s jobs numbers has been released, that he was “Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning.”
The President had received the jobs numbers himself the previous night, leading to the concern that he may have participated in insider trading by sharing the data privately in addition to breaking the federal rule prohibiting officials from commenting on the numbers before they’re made public.
In an interview with Kudlow Sunday, Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked if Trump had “agreed that he won’t do it again.”
“By law and custom, I was just doing my job, and it was a great number, and I got ahold of him on Air Force One,” Kudlow said of his decision to share the jobs numbers with Trump on Thursday night. “Has he done anything wrong? Of course he hasn’t. He didn’t put the numbers out. Other presidents have done this before. Someone reminded me, President Obama once—”
“He did it before he got the numbers,” Wallace interjected, correcting Kudlow’s reference to Obama.
“Look, Presidents can say what they are going to say,” Kudlow continued. “If he’d put the number out, that would have been a much more difficult proposition. Will he do it again? Chris, I don’t know if he will do it again. I suppose I hope he doesn’t.”
“But, you know, just saying let’s look at the jobs numbers, all of America is looking at the job numbers. That’s a harmless tweet.”
