The “Morning Joe” crew on Monday warned that Donald Trump’s firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer will raise further scrutiny into the employment numbers released under the new leadership.
The president fired McEntarfer on Friday after suggesting that weaker-than-expected jobs report was “rigged.”
“When the numbers are good, he praises them,” Jonathan Lemire said on “Morning Joe” Monday. “When the numbers are bad, he gets angry, and he fires the person in charge.”
Earlier this year, Trump praised the bureau’s job reports – but after Friday’s numbers were released he said they were rigged in favor of Democrats, noting that he is looking for “an exceptional replacement” after he deemed the numbers subpar.
“This would have been unthinkable a decade ago before Trump came on the scene,” NYT Opinion writer Mara Gay told Lemire.”This is another example of American exceptionalism out the window.”
She said that the implications of this decision will affect the credibility of the United States as a democracy. She pointed to other examples in modern history of Greece, Argentina and China, stating that their leaders fudged the numbers to appease their world leaders. Gay added that inflating publicly reported numbers will not affect the American economy – it will only cause more unrest internally.
“What Americans can expect is to see the United States lose its sense of confidence in facts and also just excellence … the political reality will catch up with him,” Gay said of Trump’s refusal to accept that the economy is weakening because of his tariffs.
Andrew Ross Sorkin warned that Trump’s decision will stir greater distrust of facts amongst world leaders.
“Invariably when those numbers [reported by the Chinese government] come out, there are conversations about what are the real numbers,” Sorkin said. “Nobody believes the numbers that the Chinese government provides. That is the fear about what’s about to happen here in the United States.”
Senior writer at “The Dispatch” David Drucker rebutted Trump’s claim that the numbers are in favor of Democrats, pointing specifically to what he called a “horrendous” job report from President Joe Biden’s administration ahead of the 2024 election.
“When the president talks about rigged numbers and that it was rigged in favor of the Democrats right before the last election, it’s just flatly untrue,” David Drucker said. He said the September report ahead of the election reported worse employment numbers than Friday’s report that caused Trump to fire the data chief.
“Morning Joe” anchor Joe Scarborough added that there are several examples in modern history of the practical impacts of misconstruing numbers in favor of the individual in power.
“You don’t have to go to the Soviet Union to just look at the practical impacts of when leaders start to fudge the numbers,” Scarborough said.
