‘It’d show up in the data’: Kevin Hassett downplays concerns over the economy, and refuses to believe voters are unhappy

White House National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett argued Sunday that public frustration with the economy would already be visible in official statistics. He made that case on CNN’s State of the Union, where host Jake Tapper pressed him on weak hiring and on surveys that show many Americans still rate conditions poorly.

The interview followed a Bureau of Labor Statistics report, released two days earlier, that the economy added 29,000 jobs in September, reports The Independent. That total came in about 60,000 short of what forecasters had expected. Tapper asked whether people who do not see the economy as strong are simply mistaken.

Hassett pointed to the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers and described a partisan split in the answers. “The Republicans who are surveyed say the economy is great. Democrats who are surveyed say the economy is like the worst since the Great Depression, and the Independents agree with the Democrats,” he said.

Jobs revisions, mortgage costs, and gas prices dominate the exchange

The Michigan survey itself showed sentiment falling four points in September. Compared with January of this year, Republican sentiment was 20 percentage points lower, and Democratic sentiment was down 13 percentage points. Hassett said the poll counted most independents as Democrats, then set the finding aside. 

“And so it’s saying that people are really unhappy, but I just think it’s a bad poll,” he said. “But again, if people were unhappy, it’d show up in the data,” Tapper answered that the discontent was already visible, only in figures Hassett was not using. “It seems to be showing up in the data, just not the data you’re looking at,” Tapper said.

Mortgage rates came next. Tapper recalled that Trump, during the 2024 campaign, said he could get those rates down to 3 percent, while they have risen to 7 percent this year. Hassett said the president had not fallen short. “President Trump hasn’t failed to deliver at all,” he said. “The economy is booming, and what you have to do is you have to look at the whole picture.”

He said buyers and builders were behaving as they would in a strong expansion, citing a summer rise in housing starts and permits and income growth that ran ahead of mortgage rates. He still said borrowing costs need to ease. “Absolutely true, mortgage rates have to come down, and as we get inflation down to one, two percent, then that’s where mortgage rates are going to head towards,” Hassett said. “But the bottom line is that in the end, yeah. Look at the hard data. People are buying houses.”

Hassett chaired the Council of Economic Advisers in Trump’s first term and has backed the administration on tariffs and on the war in Iran.

Polling shows Democrats holding a significant edge heading into next month’s midterm elections, driven largely by unhappiness over that war and the jump in gas prices tied to it. Trump has separately complained that voters remain dissatisfied with the economy.

Asked when gas would drop to $3 a gallon and when inflation would reach 2 percent, the level the Federal Reserve and economists treat as ideal, Hassett contrasted surveys with government releases. “The hard data are radically inconsistent with the polls,” he said. “And so, which do you believe, the government hard data or the polls that have been wrong about every single election since I can remember?”

Tapper returned to the September payroll figure of 29,000. Hassett treated it as a one-month reading. “Oh come on, that’s just last month,” he said. Tapper noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had also revised the July and August reports down by 60,000 jobs.

Later, on Fox News, Hassett joined Larry Kudlow, who ran the National Economic Council in Trump’s first term, and said the president had “created the golden age,” highlighting manufacturing. Hassett’s bullish case for the economy has not reached many voters, as a new poll finds half of rural voters say the economy is worse under Trump but most aren’t ready to turn to Democrats either. 

Hassett said factory-building employment had expanded since Trump took office. “Since President Trump took office, there are 112,000 people, including 12,000 in the supposedly weak jobs report, that are now working building factories,” he said. 

“As many people as are at a Michigan football game, think of that whole stadium, and they’re all building factories. And how bullish is that for the economy?” Kudlow replied, “And Michigan keeps losing their football games.”