WASHINGTON — “Give me a break.”

That was the response of a combative President Donald Trump when asked Tuesday morning on CNBC about former federal officials — including his onetime Transportation secretary, Elaine Chao — saying that a Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner would essentially be unable to doctor data to make him look bad.

“I think when somebody says, ‘The commissioner is not involved,’ I don’t want to get into any arguments with anybody — why should I? She’s a very nice lady,” Trump said via telephone about former Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom he fired on Friday. “But when they say that nobody was involved, that it wasn’t political, give me a break.”

Asked if he intends to seek a legally questionable third term, a defiant Trump signaled a possibly seismic constitutional showdown: “I’d like to run. I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had. You know why? Because people love the tariffs … and they love that foreign countries aren’t ripping us off.”

Trump sparred with the CNBC anchors over his abrupt sacking of McEntarfer following an underwhelming July jobs report and revised-down numbers for April, May and June. He verbally tussled several times with Joe Kernen, the most conservative voice on the network’s “Squawk Box” morning show.

“You don’t have the best you ever had on overall poll numbers,” Kernen said to Trump, who shot back: “I have the best.”

Moments later, the president insulted the network’s parent company: “I think CBS is a shade, actually, CNN is a shade better than NBC. I think NBC is probably the worst of them all.”

Trump and the anchors also clashed over his tariffs and his claims that BLS published “rigged” data intended to help then-Vice President Kamala Harris in their presidential matchup last year.

Here are four takeaways from a wide-ranging and sometimes-raucuous 37-minute interview to kick off the August recess.

BLS: ‘phony’ vs. ‘incorrect’

Trump has long seemed to adhere to that age-old adage: Repeat something often enough, and it becomes the truth. That appears to be a big part of his messaging strategy about his decision to oust McEntarfer.

“Just days before the election, they put out numbers that it was like the country was on fire, was doing so well, and then they did a revision about two weeks later, and the revision was down by almost 900,000 jobs,” Trump said — falsely. “And I said … ‘What would have happened? What would have happened if I lost?’ Think of it. I would have said they gave phony numbers, and then they revised them a week and a half later.”

Even in that remark, Trump’s timeline changed from a revision two weeks later to a week-and-a-half. In a remarkable television moment, Trump even accepted Kernen’s challenge that the “Squawk Box” team would “check on that” during the interview. Kernen returned to it a few minutes later.

“Moving on to your claim that that revision helped [Harris] or hurt you. … The 800,000, it was, it was in August. There was still plenty of time for voters to see” the economy had slowed, the CNBC anchor said, adding: “There were other revisions downward from prior to the election.”

Trump responded by merely repeating his false versions of jobs data from last fall.

“The president’s timeline on past BLS announcements supposedly attempting to aid Democrats in the 2024 election is also incorrect,” FactCheck.org, an independent research organization, wrote in a Monday analysis. “Trump’s claims echo his past baseless assertions that the Biden administration had manipulated data on jobs.”

Trump’s comments also came after Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said the president “hates truth when he doesn’t agree with it.”

“As long as he does that, this economy will not improve. Inflation and costs … to the American people will not go away, new jobs will not return to this country. He ought to stop governing like a leader, not someone who imitates authoritarian leaders,” the New York Democrat said Friday on the Senate floor.

Fed chair: Kevin vs. Kevin

Federal Reserve Chair Becky Quick? Or Chair Kernen?

Trump told Kernen that anyone in the CNBC studio on Tuesday morning would be qualified to head the central bank when the term of outgoing Chair Jerome Powell, whom he has harshly criticized and called to step aide, expires next year.

“I say Kevin and Kevin. Both Kevins are very good,” Trump said of White House chief economic adviser Kevin Hassett and former Federal Reserve Board member Kevin Warsh when discussing whom he’s considering nominating to succeed Powell.

“I have two other people that are doing well,” the president said. “In the end, there are numerous people that are qualified. Everyone on your phone right now, in terms of, at your beautiful studio, would be very qualified, in my opinion — better than most of the people that do it for a living.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, though, would not be in the running for Fed chief, Trump said.

“I’ll take him off because I asked him just last night, ‘Is this something you want?’ Trump recalled, adding that Bessent responded that he wanted to stay where he was.

“He’s doing a great job, and he wants to do what he’s doing,” the president said.

Tariffs: India indigestion

As countries like India and Switzerland scramble for last-minute trade deals with the Trump administration before higher tariffs kick in Friday, Trump poured cold water on an agreement this week with New Delhi.

In fact, he announced he soon would likely increase the country’s tariff level.

“What people don’t like to say about India, they’re the highest tariff nation. … We do very, very little business with India because their tariffs are so high,” Trump said. “So India has not been a good trading partner, because they do a lot of business with us, but we don’t do business with them.”

“So we settled on 25 percent, but I think I’m going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours, because they’re buying Russian oil, they’re fueling the war machine,” Trump said. “And, if they’re going to do that, then I’m not going to be happy.”

One sticking point with Switzerland, according to Trump administration officials, has been pharmaceuticals. The president floated action there too.

“Within the next week or so, we’re going to be announcing [drug] tariffs,” he told CNBC. “But on pharmaceuticals. We’ll be putting a initially small tariff on pharmaceuticals, but in one year, one and a half years, maximum, it’s going to go to 150 percent, and then it’s going to go to 250 percent.”

The idea is to force drug manufacturers to move production facilities to the United States. “We want pharmaceuticals made in our country,” Trump said.

Big banks: ‘Kissing my ass’

The president made clear he is still miffed with major American banks that refused to lend to him or do other business in between his presidential terms. So much so that Trump said he soon would sign an executive order targeting financial institutions he deems to have discriminated against conservatives and “Trump supporters.”

“Brian was kissing my ass when I was president,” Trump said of Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. “And when I called him after I was president to deposit a billion dollars-plus and a lot of other things, more importantly, to open accounts, which banks always like … he said, ‘We can’t do it.’ No, we can’t do it.’”

“So I went to another one, another one, another one. I ended up going to small banks all over the place. I mean, I was putting $10 million here, $10 million there, did $5 million, $10 million, $12 million. I have them all over the place, the craziest thing. … They were doing me a favor, and that’s because the [bigger] banks discriminated against me very badly.”

Like with many other topics, Trump was describing an unproven conspiracy theory that senior Biden administration officials pressured major banks to freeze him out.

“They totally discriminated against, I think, me, maybe even more, but they discriminated against many conservatives. … I think the word might be ‘Trump supporters’ more than conservatives,” he contended without presenting evidence. “And I believe that Biden or Kamala, and I don’t think they’re smart enough to do it, but the people that are surrounding the beautiful Resolute Desk, the high-IQ people that are radical left, I believe they told the Banking Commission, the bankers and the banking regulators, ‘Do everything you can to destroy Trump.’”

“And that’s what they did. And guess what? I’m president,” he said.

Trump did not mention, notably, that financial institutions might have been nervous about doing business with a former president who, at one point during his four years out of office, faced 91 criminal charges.

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