JOBS/LABOR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TWITTER: “President Trump broke years of presidential protocol on Friday [6-1-18] morning by posting a tweet that signaled a strong jobs report was on its way from the Labor Department an hour before the report was released. The Bureau of Labor Statistics routinely releases its monthly employment report on the first Friday of the month. The night before, under longstanding tradition, the president and several senior administration officials — including the Treasury secretary and the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers — are briefed on the numbers, which they are not supposed to disclose until the report is made public at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time the next morning. But Mr. Trump, who was briefed on the numbers Thursday evening, appeared to foreshadow the strength of the latest report on Friday morning on Twitter: ‘Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning.’ Social media users saw the message as evidence that Mr. Trump had seen the numbers, and that they were good. Sure enough, the report showed that the economy added 223,000 jobs in May, above forecasters’ expectations. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.8 percent — the lowest level in 18 years.”
-Jim Tankersley, “Trump Breaks Protocol With Jobs Report Tweet Before Data Is Released,” The New York Times online, June 1, 2018