Welcome to meet the press now. I'm Kristen Welker in Washington, where any minute now we are expecting to hear from President Trump for the first time since today's jobs report showed a dramatic slowdown in the labor market and potential

warning signs for the president's economic agenda. The August jobs report from the labor

department showed just 22,000 new jobs created last month, much lower than economists were

expecting. And the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%. Even more problematic, the Labor Department also

revised June and July's jobs numbers revealing that the U.S. economy actually lost jobs in June.

It's the first month of job losses since the pandemic. Notably, President Trump was already

temporary expectations ahead of today's news.

Here's what he had to say last night.

I don't know. They come out tomorrow, but the real numbers that I'm talking about are going to be whatever it is, but we'll be in a year from now.

With these monstrous, huge, beautiful places, the palaces of genius. And when they start opening up,

you're seeing, I think you'll see job numbers that are going to be absolutely incredible. Right now,

it's a lot of construction numbers, but you're going to see job numbers like our country has

never seen before. This is also the first jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since the president fired its commissioner, the BLS commissioner in the wake of July's disappointing report, which the president baselessly claimed was being rigged.

Joining me now is Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.

We really appreciate it.

Well, it's great to have you.

I do want to start off with your reaction to the August Jobs Report.

As you know, just 22,000 jobs were created last month, and revisions showed the U.S.

actually lost jobs in June.

That's the first month of job losses since the pandemic. Is this a warning sign about the state of the labor market? Well, right now when we're looking at all of the

indicators, that it's looking like things are running very smoothly and that the economy's on the

way up. We've got industrial production at all-time high. We've got capital spending up

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