Trump criticized for firing BLS chief after jobs report

Donald Trump talks to reporters on tarmac — Firing an agency head over numbers you don't like is 'way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did'

(Image credit: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

What happened

The White House Sunday defended President Donald Trump from criticism over his decision Friday to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics chief Erika McEntarfer following a jobs report that showed lower-than-expected hiring in July. But Trump's economic advisers repeatedly declined to offer evidence to support his claim that the numbers were "rigged" to make him look bad.

Who said what

Trump sacked McEntarfer, a veteran labor economist confirmed by the Senate 86-8 last year, after the BLS reported job gains of only 73,000 last month and revised the May and June numbers downward by 258,000 jobs. Employment numbers are often revised as more data comes in, and these changes, "while large, were not unheard of," The Washington Post said. But they "hit at an especially sensitive point" for Trump, suggesting his tariffs and other policies have "started to seriously slow the economy."

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told NBC's "Meet the Press" that Trump was "absolutely not" shooting the messenger by firing McEntarfer but "wants his own people there, so that when we see the jobs numbers, they are more transparent and more reliable." Hassett told "Fox News Sunday" there were "partisan patterns" in the jobless data and "we need to understand why" the "BLS numbers" are so anemic.

This is "definitely a case of shooting the messenger," Dean Smith, the chief strategist at FolioBeyond, said to Reuters, and "it's going to undermine confidence in the data going forward." There is "no way for a commissioner to rig the jobs numbers," William Beach, a former BLS commissioner appointed by Trump in 2017, told CNN's "State of the Union." It's a "preposterous charge," former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said on ABC's "This Week." And firing an agency head over numbers you don't like is "way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did."

What next?

Trump Sunday night called McEntarfer's report a "scam" filled with "ridiculous" numbers and said he would announce her replacement "over the next three, four days."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.