Donald Trump’s decision to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), brought his administration to a new level of crazy. Firing the head of a statistical agency because he didn’t like the data is extreme even by Trumpian standards. But Trump’s statements on the firing and the response of his top aides also tell us a lot about the people he has surrounding himself with.

In making his case that McEntarfer was cooking numbers to make Biden and Harris look good — and to make him look bad — Trump has repeatedly claimed that McEntarfer inflated the jobs numbers before the election and then revised them downward shortly after the election. While everything about Trump’s  allegations is transparently absurd to anyone who knows anything about BLS procedures, this claim stands out in that it is about a simple fact that is easily shown to be wrong.

The downward revision to which Trump referred was made on August 21, 2024, more than two months before the election. This revision was widely discussed in the media at the time. For example, the New York Times and Los Angeles Times both had major news articles on it.

Anyhow, this is a clear indisputable fact. Trump is mistaken, the revisions took place before the election, not after the election as Trump keeps insisting. Donald Trump’s top economic advisers, people like NEC director Kevin Hassett, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Stephen Miran, the Chair of his Council of Economic Advisers, are not stupid. They all know that Trump is clearly mistaken on this simple, but very important fact.

Yet apparently none of them can talk to Trump and explain to him his mistake. This is a big deal in the current situation, but it should also be taken as a really big warning on the troubles ahead.

If Trump decides something about the state of the economy, no one on his team is going to ever correct him, no matter how crazy it is. If his tariffs, budget cuts, and arbitrary and ad hoc regulatory changes give us 20 percent unemployment and 20 percent inflation, and Trump says we have a perfect economy, none of his aides is going tell him otherwise. That means that there will never be any opportunity to correct a mistaken policy, because Trump’s advisers are too scared to tell him the real economic situation.

That is very bad news. This means that we not only are looking at bad outcomes due to poorly crafted policies, we are likely looking at situations where Trump will never reverse course because his aides are too scared to tell Trump the truth about the state of the economy.

Everyone understands that a president’s cabinet will be loyal to them, but the willingness of Trump’s top aides to completely ignore reality to humor their boss is unprecedented in this country. It is very bad news.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.https://cepr.net/publications/donald-trumps-team-of-cowards/

The post Trump’s Team of Cowards appeared first on CounterPunch.org.