Former officials say firing of BLS commissioner emblematic of president’s battle against established facts and history
Donald Trump is waging a war on truth by firing top officials who present facts he finds unpalatable, while he banks on key loyalists at executive agencies to bolster his policies and powers by “rewriting history’s narrative” and squelching dissent, say scholars and former officials.
Trump’s penchant for rejecting facts in an authoritarian style was especially revealed in August by his sudden firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, charging without evidence that her latest report was “totally rigged”, just hours after she released data undercutting his rosy economic boasts, say critics.
The firing was emblematic of Trump’s expanding battle against people and policies that challenge the US president’s often conspiratorial views about truth such as his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, which Trump last fall falsely blamed again on “fraud”.
From the justice department to the Environmental Protection Agency to other key agencies, Trump loyalists have pushed falsehoods and taken radical steps to promote Trump’s policies and what a Trump adviser in 2017 dubbed “alternative facts”. In doing so, Trump and his top allies are acting in an authoritarian style by revising history, rejecting facts and widely accepted science, critics add.
