Welcome to the beat. I'm Jason Johnson in for Ari Melburgh. We start with Donald Trump's economy sputtering as he escalates a war with Iran that's threatening global energy and America's wallets.

Today, February jobs report, U.S. economy losing 92,000 jobs, the unemployment rate ticking up to 4.4%. Yes, here we go. This is the Big

Feb Job Job Job Jobs Report. Non-Farm payrolls minus 92,000, minus 92,000. That is a biggie. Here we go. So we have a negative number for February non-farm

payrolls, a loss of 92,000 jobs. We are also seeing the unemployment rate tick up to 4.4%.

What else is clearly caught off guard and they're trying to spend the data any way that they can.

It's something of a surprise, but there are some weather, there are strikes on the West Coast.

And I think that we also have this birth death model.

Yeah, I think it's consistent with everything else we're saying, which is that the economy is really strong.

The GOP knows a weak economy during a costly, undefined war in the Middle East isn't great economic pitch ahead of the midterms.

So more than a year after Trump took office, his aides are still trying to blame, you guessed it, Joe Biden.

The midterms are about roughly nine months away.

How soon can we expect the jobs picture to pick up sharply more, more jobs coming into the economy?

When are we going to see that?

Well, I think we have seen that tick up a little bit. Again, this number in its raw numbers

is not something we wanted to see, but overall, we're still better than what we inherited from

the Biden administration. Fact check, false. Biden's last 13 months in office, the U.S. economy created 1.4 million jobs,

while Trump's 13 months back has seen the economy gained only 198,000 jobs. Meanwhile, there's

no end in sight to the war with Iran. Now rattling energy market, sending the price of oil up,

and pushing stocks down, down, down. The S&P 500 is now in negative territory for 2026.

Qatar's energy minister is now warning of catastrophic consequences for the global economy.

Quote, this will bring down the economies of the world.

If this war continues for a few weeks, GDP growth around the world will be impacted.

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