Trump’s Bid To Fire BLS Commissioner ‘Preposterously Stupid And Deeply Dangerous’

President Donald Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn’t like Friday’s jobs report is a terrible idea that will undermine the public’s confidence in the government’s economic data, a former labor official said. 

“It’s preposterously stupid and deeply dangerous for our economy,” Seth Harris, who served as the deputy labor secretary under former President Barack Obama, told HuffPost.

Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday that he was terminating BLS Commissioner Dr. Erika McEntarfer in the middle of her term. The agency reported Friday that the economy only added a disappointing 73,000 jobs in June, which was less than expected, and revised the counts from two previous reports downward by a combined 258,000 jobs.

Trump claimed McEntarfer had “rigged” the data to make Republicans look bad, but Harris said Trump had nobody to blame for the disappointing employment numbers but himself.

“There is absolutely no chance that the BLS commissioner or anyone else at BLS manipulated the jobs and unemployment data to hurt Donald Trump politically,” said Harris, now a law professor at Northeastern University. 

“Donald Trump produced these bad job and unemployment numbers with his policies,” he said. “It’s not the people counting the jobs — it’s the guy who’s overseeing the economy.”

The BLS is an office within the Labor Department that produces crucial economic data, including the unemployment rate, that policymakers and businesses rely upon. Trump has stoked outrageous conspiracy theories about the agency for years, alleging its employees mess with the numbers to hurt him and help his political adversaries. 

During his first run for the presidency, Trump told voters not to believe the “phony numbers” under the Obama administration, claiming the real unemployment rate was “as high as 35” percent.

McEntarfer was confirmed as BLS commissioner in January 2024 and is supposed to serve a four-year term.

Harris said firing her would mark a grave escalation in Trump’s habit of sowing doubt about the government’s economic research. He said “capitalism depends on certainty and transparency,” which isn’t what the country would get if the commissioner were beholden to the president.

“The danger is that the public, economic actors, decision-makers in government and the business community and everyone else who’s trying to figure out what’s going on in our economy will doubt the validity of the numbers,” he said. “If you do not have an accurate picture of what is happening in the economy, you cannot make sound decisions.”

He added that if anyone had manipulated data, a number of whistleblowers would have stepped forward. 

Key senators also had harsh words for Trump.

“This is 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,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement.

Wyden warned that while the BLS might sound obscure to people outside of Washington, D.C, Trump’s interference with jobs data is “a nightmare scenario” that will cause lasting damage.

“Bottom line, Trump wants to cook the books,” he said.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who sits on the Senate’s finance and banking panels, emphasized that McEntarfer is a nonpolitical career civil servant who oversees economic data.

“Firing the ump doesn’t change the score,” he said. “Americans deserve to know the truth about the state of the Trump economy.”