President Donald Trump has tried to justify firing former Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer by claiming that her agency’s gold standard employment reports were “rigged” in order to harm him politically.
Trump has provided no evidence to support his allegation. Nonetheless, he has repeatedly claimed that the BLS issued “phony” strong-looking jobs numbers during the last year of the Biden administration, only to revise them sharply downward right after the 2024 presidential election.
“Just days before the [Nov. 5 presidential] election, they put out numbers that it was like the country was on fire,” Trump claimed Tuesday morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“And then they did a revision about two weeks later, and the revision was down by almost 900,000 jobs,” he alleged.
When a host pushed back, Trump doubled down, claiming “the numbers were rigged.”
