I wonder if Trump wanted to the numbers to say 100,000s of jobs were created each month but they talked him out of it and made the lies seem at least plausible.

Powell said that staffers at the Fed think that the government could be overestimating the number of jobs created by 60,000 each month. With published figures stating that the U.S. has added an average of 40,000 jobs each month since April, the true numbers could be closer to a loss of 20,000 jobs a month.