Director of the White House National Economic Council Kevin Hassett was confronted with September's awful jobs report by Fox News's Bill Hemmer, and Hassett somehow said, "It's proving that Trumponomics is really working."

Hemmer started with the obvious problem: the September report was bad. Very bad. The economy added 29,000 jobs, versus expectations of around 88,000–90,000; unemployment ticked up to 4.2%, and prior months were revised downward.

Bassett's argument has several parts:

The jobs number "bounces up and down." So he minimizes the significance of the disappointing monthly figure.

He then pivoted to the GDP, noting that the latest revision put Q2 growth at 2.2%. That's a legitimate positive data point, although "radically revised up" is a pretty generous description—the third estimate is 2.2%, versus 2.5% in Q1.

He pivots again to inflation, claiming the three-month measures show very low inflation.

Then comes his big argument: factory construction jobs are evidence that Trump's policies are creating an investment boom today that will generate jobs tomorrow.
And finally, he concludes: "It's proving that Trumponomics is really working."

An especially interesting wrinkle appears in his factory-construction argument. The September report itself says construction added 11,000 jobs and manufacturing added 9,000—not exactly an employment explosion.

That exchange makes it even clearer that Hassett knows exactly what he's doing. He's not really defending the 29,000 number. He's somehow arguing that listeners shouldn't use that number to measure the administration's economic performance.

Hemmer basically gave Hassett an opening to acknowledge the jobs report.

'Yeah, that's a pretty bad jobs report.'

And Hassett's answer is essentially:

'Actually, this bad jobs report proves we're doing great.'

I paraphrased that, but that's what happened in a nutshell.