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Donald Trump didn’t like the slight gain in jobs that the government reported for July. So he fired the commissioner for labor statistics, who nobody had heard of until 10 minutes ago.
Problem solved?
Well, not exactly.
Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, didn’t unilaterally make the decision that the economy added just 73,000 jobs in July. That figure was produced by hundreds of Labor Department analysts, following established rules, before it reached her level.
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For the president to claim, without proof, that this was “rigged”—to make him, and Republicans look bad–doesn’t change the underlying reality. The number was disappointing. That hasn’t changed.
The same goes for the downward revision of 258,000 jobs in the previous two months.
That is incredibly common. It happened during the Biden administration, in one case a downward revision of an earlier jobs estimate. It’s a standard adjustment made once more information has become available.
But the economy is what it is. Dumping the Biden appointee doesn’t change that.
Maybe there’s a problem with the constant revisions, but that’s been going on for years. McEntarfer should have put out a more detailed statement.
There has been an avalanche of media criticism for the president undermining confidence in the reliability of the numbers we all depend on.
Kevin O’Leary, the “Shark Tank” investor, told CNN: “I did not agree on whacking the commissioner. I don’t like that. Whacking statisticians makes no sense whatsoever. You don’t shoot the messenger.”
Trump’s BLS chief in the first term, Bill Beach, said “the commissioner doesn’t do anything to collect the numbers. The commissioner doesn’t see the numbers until Wednesday before they’re published. By the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they’re all prepared…
“When I was commissioner, we had a 500,000 job revision during President Trump’s first term,” he told CNN. “And why do we do that? Because firms are created or firms go out of business, and we don’t really know that during the course of the year, until we reconcile against a real full count of all the businesses.”
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Democrats, of course, are going haywire. Janet Yellen, Biden’s Treasury secretary and Fed chief, said it reeked of a “banana republic.”
So once the president names his own person, will the markets and the public have confidence that future jobs numbers are real? Or will that appointee cook the books in his favor?
Trump’s case: “Last weeks [sic] 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. 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.”
Millions of business decisions are made based on the jobs number being a fair and reasonable estimate, based on Labor’s survey of participating companies.
But let’s pull back and look at some other recent Trump actions.
The Office of Special Counsel is now investigating Jack Smith, who brought two criminal cases against Trump, for violating the Hatch Act. That’s the law that bars government officials from making blatantly partisan comments. But it’s usually ignored: When Kellyanne Conway was accused of violating the act and recommended for dismissal, Trump just blew it off.
Ex-CIA director John Brennan and fired FBI chief James Comey are under criminal investigation for allegedly politicizing intelligence in 2016.
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Trump has also ordered a criminal probe of Barack Obama for his actions in 2016 and declared him guilty of “treason.”
I’d just offer a reminder that Trump’s special counsel in the first term, John Durham, investigated all this and brought no charges against these men.
I know that his files have recently been declassified, but Durham wrote:
“The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo,” a man funded by George Soros, “were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based thinktanks.” Durham indicted only three minor officials.
Trump is extremely aggressive, of course, whether it’s suing the media (winning $16-million settlements from ABC and CBS); targeting Ivy League universities (Columbia agreeing to pay a $200-million penalty); ordering an investigation of first-term cybersecurity official Miles Taylor (better known as Anonymous); ordering federal agencies to cut ties with WilmerHale (and saying it was because Robert Mueller worked there), along with defunding NPR and PBS.
Oh, and did I mention that the current president has also ordered an investigation of pardons and other actions by Joe Biden, aimed at showing he was too mentally impaired to do the job? The former president, who is being treated for prostate cancer, dismissed the idea as “ridiculous.”
All this projects an image of strength, enabling Trump to drive the news agenda. But it also reveals a president preoccupied by past grievances and determined to settle scores with opponents he believes unfairly targeted him.
And that’s why Erika McEntarfer is suddenly out of a job.
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