Former Obama adviser quips that Trump is ‘combing Fox News' for new Labor Stats chief after firing
Following a weak jobs report Friday that found not only did the U.S. economy add only 73,000 jobs in July but that the 258,000 fewer jobs were created in the previous two months, the president announced that he had axed the chief labor statistician Erika McEntarfer.
'I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election, and there were other times,' the president told reporters over the weekend when pressed on his decision. Since then, Trump has repeatedly and baselessly claimed that the jobs report 'was RIGGED' and that McEntarfer – who was appointed by his predecessor Joe Biden – had manipulated the numbers to make him 'look bad.'
While the president has faced some criticism from Republican lawmakers for firing McEntarfer, who was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate last year, White House officials were tasked over the weekend with justifying and defending Trump's rash move. Their efforts were met with mockery and ridicule from cable news outlets and editorial boards.
The Wall Street Journal labeled the president's economic adviser the 'bureau of labor denial' while Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough claimed that Trump's aides had to 'put on their Baghdad Bob hat this weekend because there was no justification for' the firing.
Axelrod, who now works as a CNN senior political commentator, took a decidedly snarky tone over the news that Trump would soon offer up a replacement for McEntarfer.
Sharing a New York Times article that noted the president had told reporters he'd announce a new BLS commissioner 'over the next three or four days,' Axelrod tweeted Sunday: 'He's probably combing Fox News right now for a qualified replacement.'
Of course, Axelrod – who served as a senior advisor to former President Barack Obama and helped run his two presidential campaigns – was referencing Trump's penchant for using the conservative cable giant to staff up his administration.
Trump created a revolving door between Fox News and the White House during his first term in office, and his second term has seen roughly two dozen former Fox News employees take on roles in the administration – with several of them filling Cabinet-level jobs.
Axelrod wasn't the only one who jokingly suggested that the president would look for a loyalist to lead the Bureau.
George Conway, the former GOP lawyer who has become a leading anti-Trump critic in recent years, created a fake White House press release announcing that the president had named former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to be the next Labor Stats chief. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to charges of grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records in 2022. He also later pleaded guilty to perjury charges for lying under oath in a New York civil trial.
In his newsletter, The Atlantic contributing writer Derek Thompson argued that Trump was waging a war against reality, adding that weak job growth wasn't 'the only inconvenient statistic that the Trump administration has tried to suppress in its first seven months.'
As Thompson pointed out, the administration has also dismissed scientists in charge of vaccine evaluations at the CDC and gotten rid of experts who put together national climate assessments so insurance companies can gauge risk, not to mention the firing of McEntarfer.
In a wild post on Truth Social Monday morning, Trump claimed that he was the victim of 'FAKE' numbers that were meant to hide the economic success of his tariff policies.
'Last weeks Job's Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged. That's why, in both cases, there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats,' he wrote. 'Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!! I will pick an exceptional replacement. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAGA!'
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She was told that if asked to describe a cup as half-empty or half-full, BLS says 'it is an eight ounce cup with four ounces of liquid.' The revised jobs data that has attracted Trump's ire is actually more in line with other figures than before the revision. For example, payroll processor ADP uses data from its millions of clients to calculate its own jobs report, and it showed a sharp hiring slowdown in May and June that is closer to the revised BLS data. Trump and his White House have a long track record of celebrating the jobs numbers — when they are good. These are the figures is Trump attacking Trump has focused on the revisions to the May and June data, which on Friday were revised lower, with job gains in May reduced to 19,000 from 144,000, and for June to just 14,000 from 147,000. Every month's jobs data is revised in the following two months. Trump also repeated a largely inaccurate attack from the campaign about an annual revision last August, which reduced total employment in the United States by 818,000, or about 0.5%. The government also revises employment figures every year. Trump charged the annual revision was released before the 2024 presidential election to 'boost' Vice President Kamala Harris's "chances of Victory," yet it was two months before the election and widely reported at the time that the revision lowered hiring during the Biden-Harris administration and pointed to a weaker economy. Here's why the government revises the data The monthly revisions occur because many companies that respond to the government's surveys send their data in late, or correct the figures they've already submitted. The proportion of companies sending in their data later has risen in the past decade. Every year, the BLS does an additional revision based on actual job counts that are derived from state unemployment insurance records. Those figures cover 95% of U.S. businesses and aren't derived from a survey but are not available in real time. These are the factors that cause revisions Figuring out how many new jobs have been added or lost each month is more complicated than it may sound. For example, if one person takes a second job, should you focus on the number of jobs, which has increased, or the number of employed people, which hasn't? (The government measures both: The unemployment rate is based on how many people either have or don't have jobs, while the number of jobs added or lost is counted separately). Each month, the government surveys about 121,000 businesses and government agencies at over 630,000 locations — including multiple locations for the same business — covering about one-third of all workers. 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