Trump Econ Director Cites ‘Revisions’ As ‘Hard Evidence’ To Fire Labor Statistics Chief

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett delivered on Sunday a defense of President Donald Trump over the firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.

On NBC’s “Meet The Press,” moderator Kristen Welker pressed Hassett about “hard evidence” for Trump’s suggestion that McEntarfer, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate, manipulated job numbers for political reasons.

“There was an 818,000 [downward] revision making the Joe Biden job record a lot worse that came out AFTER he withdrew,” says National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on jobs numbers.

“It’s the President’s highest priority that the data be trusted.” pic.twitter.com/6Fhuqe97B8

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 3, 2025

“Well, I mean, the revisions are hard evidence,” Hassett replied. “For example, there was an 818,000 revision making the Joe Biden job record a lot worse that came out after he withdrew from the presidential campaign. There have been a bunch of patterns that could make people wonder. And I think the most important thing for people to know is that it’s the president’s highest priority that the data be trusted and that people get to the bottom of why these revisions are so unreliable.”

Trump announced on Friday that he ordered the firing of McEntarfer after Friday’s jobs report showed that the United States job market underperformed expectations with 73,000 jobs added last month and made significant negative revisions to previous reports. The ouster led some critics to warn the numbers that come from Trump’s administration in the future may not be reliable.

“Studies show that BLS is getting a — doing a better job now than they did 20 years ago, 20 and 30 years ago, in estimating the first number. So, even though it’s revised two more times — that 73,000 will be revised two more times. And that’s — they’re more accurate now than they were 30 years ago. So, I said groundless. I don’t know that there’s any grounds at all for this firing,” William Beach, former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and executive director of Fiscal Lab on Capitol Hill, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Beach added, “And it really hurts the statistical system. It undermines credibility in BLS. Suppose that they get a new commissioner, and this person, male or female, are just the best people possible, right? And they do a bad number. Well, everybody’s going to think, well, it’s not as bad as it probably really is, because they’re going to suspect political influence. So this is damaging. This is not what we need to have.”

Hassett made the case in a separate interview on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump did not act in authoritarian fashion, dismissing someone who released legitimate information that he simply did not like.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on jobs numbers: “When the data are unreliable, when they keep being revised all over the place, then there are going to be people that wonder if there’s a partisan pattern in the data.” pic.twitter.com/ORjx0WgLcz

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 3, 2025

“Look, the fact is that when the data are unreliable, when they keep being revised all over the place, then there are going to be people that wonder if there’s a partisan pattern in the data. And so, if you look back to just a year ago, for example, there was another massive revision from the BLS, almost a million jobs, a million jobs down, that said that the Joe Biden jobs record was a lot worse than people thought, but we didn’t get the downward revision until after Joe Biden had dropped out,” Hassett told anchor Shannon Bream.

“And so it, once again, it made people think, what are they doing?” he went on. “I’ve got to tell you … if I were running the BLS, and I don’t aspire to, but if I were running the BLS and I had the biggest downward revision in 50 years, I would have a really, really detailed report explaining why it happened so that everybody really trusted the data. And so we had this move, that move, that move. We had a bunch of people get their responses in late or something like that. But instead, they have this little black box that moves the numbers around and makes people wonder, sometimes with partisan patterns. And so, I think what we need is a fresh set of eyes at the BLS, somebody who can clean this thing up.”