A number of prominent Republican lawmakers are firing back at President Donald Trump over his firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer following a brutal Friday jobs report that showed a dramatic slowdown in job growth, The Guardian reported Saturday.
“If she was just fired because the president or whoever decided to fire the director just… because they didn’t like the numbers, they ought to grow up,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), speaking with The Guardian.
On Friday, the BLS published a jobs report that showed only 73,000 new jobs were created in July, far below the projected 115,000. The report also saw job totals in May and June revised sharply lower, down by a combined 258,000 when compared to initial assessments.
Trump immediately took to social media following the report to call the numbers “rigged,” and subsequently fired McEntarfer, actions that received broad condemnation by experts and Democratic lawmakers alike. However, now even a handful of Republicans are pushing back on Trump’s actions.
“If the president is firing the statistician because he doesn’t like the numbers but they are accurate, then that’s a problem,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), speaking with The Guardian. “It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the president had hoped for.”
Another sticking point for some Republicans was that in firing McEntarfer, whomever Trump taps to lead the BLS next will carry significant skepticism in whatever data the agency publishes going forward. Speaking with The Guardian, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said whoever is chosen to head the agency next will have a difficult time, as “when you fire people, then it makes people trust them even less.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also slammed the decision, telling The Guardian that “you can’t really make numbers different or better by firing the people doing the counting.”
“We have to look somewhere for objective statistics,” Paul said. “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.”
The BLS has also pushed back on Trump’s unprecedented move, one that critics have argued will leave “ripple effects” across the globe. Former BLS commissioner William Beach, appointed by Trump during his first term, called McEntarfer’s firing “totally groundless,” and in a joint statement, called on Congress to investigate her termination.