President Trump’s economic team is now trying to defend his sudden decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they’re doing it without a clear case or solid numbers.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett was all over TV today trying to explain the firing, but still didn’t give any actual proof.
Speaking on NBC News, Kevin said, “The revisions are hard evidence.” He didn’t show what that evidence was. He only mentioned there had been “a bunch of patterns that could make people wonder,” but never said what those patterns were or why they mattered.
Kevin kept referring to changes in recent job reports as the reason Erika had to go, even though he didn’t say whether anyone at the White House had ever asked her to explain those changes before firing her .
Hassett calls job revisions suspicious but skips proof
The jobs report that set all of this off came out on Friday. The BLS said nonfarm payrolls grew by 73,000 in July, a little better than the 14,000 added in June, but still below the Dow Jones forecast of 100,000. The real problem wasn’t just July.
The government also cut its earlier estimates for May and June by a total of 258,000 jobs. That meant the job market had been weaker than originally thought. Kevin called those corrections a “historically important outlier,” suggesting they were just too strange to ignore.
Instead of pointing to anything illegal or improper, Kevin argued that the president “wants his own people there.” He claimed that someone new would make the numbers “more transparent and more reliable.” He added, “If there are big changes and big revisions, we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example, then we want to know why, we want people to explain it to us.” But again, he gave no sign that the White House had even asked Erika to explain anything.
Kevin also pushed back on the idea that Trump was just punishing someone for reporting bad news. But that’s exactly what critics say happened. They argue that the president only had a problem with the numbers once they stopped looking good. Erika’s firing came at a moment when Trump needed better economic headlines, and didn’t get them.
Former officials and lawmakers say the move damages trust
The backlash came quickly. William Beach, who was appointed by Trump as a past commissioner at the BLS, said Erika’s firing was “totally groundless.” He warned that it “sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau.”
William went further on CNN, saying, “Suppose that they get a new commissioner, and this person, male or female, are just the best people possible, right? And they do a bad number. Well, everybody’s going to think, well, it’s not as bad as it probably really is, because they’re going to suspect political influence.”
On Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the president was acting like a dictator. “Well, Donald Trump, firing her isn’t going to relieve the chaos that you created with your ramshackle tariff regime,” he said during remarks on the Senate floor.
Senator Ron Wyden, who leads the Senate Finance Committee for the Democrats, said the firing was “the act of somebody who is soft, weak and afraid to own up to the reality of the damage his chaos is inflicting on our economy.” He added, “Bottom line, Trump wants to cook the books.”
While many criticized the decision itself, others started asking whether the government’s method of collecting job data should change. Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, said on CBS News that the government still uses surveys that “frankly just aren’t that effective anymore.”
He said better technology exists now to track employment numbers and suggested the system should be updated. “They can get this data, I think, other ways, and I think that’s where the focus ought to be,” he said. “How do we get the data and be more resilient and more predictable and more understandable?”
Senator Rand Paul also raised concerns. He said on NBC News, “We have to look somewhere for objective statistics.” Then he added, “When the people providing the statistics are fired, it makes it much harder to make judgments that, you know, the statistics won’t be politicized.” That’s coming from a Republican senator, not someone known for siding with Trump’s critics.
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