Director of the White House Economic Council adviser Kevin Hassett fired back at NBC host Kristen Welker on Sunday as the host pressed Hassett on President Donald Trump's decision to fire the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner.
"Isn't this the very definition of shooting the messenger?" Welker asked, after reading a statement from William Beach, the former BLS commissioner, who said it was setting a dangerous precedent.
Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Friday that he instructed his team to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS, accusing her of "faking" job numbers.
"No. Absolutely not," Hassett said, arguing that he was working at the BLS and had a huge, politically important revision coming out than he would have also released a lengthy report as to why it happened.
"I would have a long report explaining what happened, and we didn't get that. We didn't get that. Right now, Goldman Sachs, people on Wall Street are wondering, 'Where did these revisions come from and why do they keep happening?' And what we need is a fresh set of eyes at the BLS," he said.
The BLS reported on Friday that 74,000 jobs were added in July, well below the 110,000 estimate of economists polled by LSEG. The report also revised job growth in May and June downward. May's gains were pared back by 125,000 to just 19,000 jobs created, while the June figures were revised down by 133,000 to just 14,000 jobs added that month.
According to the BLS, the last time a revision was down more than 133,000 was in March 2021, when it was revised down by 146,000 one year into the COVID pandemic.
Welker repeatedly pressed Hassett on whether there was "hard evidence" that the jobs report was "rigged," as Trump had argued.
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"The revisions are hard evidence. For example, there was a 818,000 revision, making the Joe Biden job record much worse 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, it's the president's highest priority that data be trusted and to get to the bottom of why the revisions are so unreliable," Hassett said.
Welker also said the president was happy to accept the jobs report numbers when they were favorable to him before asking, "Is the president prepared to fire anyone who reports data that he disagrees with?"
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"No. Absolutely not. The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers they are more transparent and more reliable, and if there are big changes and big revisions, we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example, and we want to know why, we want people to explain it to us," he responded.
